The very first post I wrote for Cubs Insider compared free agent contracts against crowd-sourced predictions of those contracts for both 2018 and the three prior seasons. The data showed that the top 20 free agents in 2018 did substantially worse than predicted in free agency. Now it is time for the 2019 version.
I have compiled a spreadsheet with FanGraphs’ 2019 crowd-sourced predictions of the average annual value (AAV) and total dollar amount for the top 50 free agents this offseason. As the offseason progresses, I will enter the actual values for each player’s contract to see how the 2019 free agent crop performs against the predictions.