In Major League Baseball, how a free agent-to-be finishes the season is much more important than how he starts. The player’s agent can chalk it up to a mechanical adjustment or a player getting back to full health or just finally “figuring it out” to explain why things didn’t click until the second half.
In any case, agents will try to sell interested teams on the player that ended the season on a roll as opposed to the player who struggled early on. The other way around would be a much tougher sell.
So while a consistent performance throughout the season would certainly help boost value and make that player less of a risk in the eyes of a team who will be investing millions of dollars, any struggling free agents-to-be still have time to turn things around as long as they’re still playing regularly.
Here are eight of those players.