Insider Names 7 Top Contenders Vying For Free Agents Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell & Max Fried

The top 3 starting pitchers in free agency (aside from Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki), are clearly Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell & Max Fried. But according to insider Jon Heyman in a Bleacher Report chat on Wednesday, there are 7 teams in the running for those three hurlers. That will leave four teams without a chair when the music stops playing.

Do we see a multi-team bidding war in the making?

Heyman names the following big spenders as the leading contenders to sign one of the aces:

Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
Chicago Cubs
Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Mets
New York Yankees
San Francisco Giants

All of these teams are in need of a boost to their rotations for various reasons.

The Orioles seem poised to lose Corbin Burnes in free agency; the Red Sox need an ace at the top of their rotation; the Cubs are focused on beefing up their pitching this winter; the Dodgers have plenty of uncertainty in their starting staff, with Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin all coming off major injuries in 2025.

The Mets have 3/5 of their rotation going into free agency, and will certainly get one of the free agent aces, while the Yankees will turn their focus to one of this trio if they fail in re-signing the big free agent catch, Juan Soto.

Heyman feels that Snell could very well re-sign in San Francisco, or head back to San Diego where he had his second Cy Young season in 2023. Burnes is also from Southern California, so the Dodgers feel like a possibility for him.

He thinks that the Cubs & Red Sox best chance would be with Fried.