Which teams would already ditch their prize free agents if they could?

The year was 2015. The Cubs looked like one of the best teams in baseball, and the Braves looked like one of the worst. The Angels were adamantly against trading Mike Trout, and baseball was popular around the country. And in this unrecognizable world, free agent baseball players were expecting million-dollar salaries in exchange for their services. Teams plotted and schemed ways to give the players these millions. It was the focus of the winter.

Together, the top 10 free agents in baseball received $1.31 billion in guaranteed money. Six or seven months later, the early returns are in, and some of those teams wish they had saved the receipt. Some of those millions aren’t going to lead to nearly as many wins as the teams would have hoped for.

Which of the top 10 free agents would be immediate free agents if their teams could flip an amnesty switch? It’s time to guess. Here is a ranking of the top free agents after the season, along with a guess if the teams who signed the top 10 on the list would immediately ditch their contract, given the chance.

We got into this here, and the conclusion was that the market for starting pitchers was so awful after the season, and the Diamondbacks’ window would be relatively unchanged, that it would make sense to keep Greinke’s contract, even after the rough start for player and team.

Greinke has been on an upward trend, with his best start of the season coming last Thursday, and his peripheral numbers are nearly identical to what they were last season. He’s coming around, and the Diamondbacks are still glad they have him.

Conclusion: Keep

Like Greinke, Price got over $200 million to be an ace. Like Greinke, his raw numbers have been erratic, even if his FIP suggests he’s been unlucky. Unlike Greinke, his team is winning a bunch, despite his struggles. This might affect the calculus.

Start with the recent improvement, though. Over his last five games, Price has been fine, with a 2.62 ERA and nearly a strikeout per inning. While it’s disingenuous to remove his worst four starts from his overall numbers and pretend they didn’t happen -- “If you remove the four dead tarantulas from the carafe, this is a perfectly good batch of sangria!” -- there was a little bit of poor cluster luck going on. And where the Red Sox are going over the next couple years, they’ll need an ace.

Conclusion: Keep

Imagine if he were hitting. The Cubs might have only 11 or 12 losses, and they would have a fighting chance.

On the one hand, Heyward is fielding as well as the Cubs could have hoped. That was the part of his game that wasn’t supposed to slump, and it’s not a coincidence that the Cubs are outperforming their FIP and at the top of the National League in most defensive metrics. He’s a modern outfield deity, and he’s been fantastic in that respect.

On the other hand, he’s hitting like a late-inning defensive replacement. The Cubs have Juan Perez in Triple-A, and he would be about $183 million cheaper, with roughly the same offensive numbers. While it’s still early enough to acknowledge the sample-size gremlins, Heyward’s power numbers hint at something seriously wrong. It’s not just that there are fewer homers -- he’s not even hitting doubles. He’s spent most of his career dealing with various ailments, and there’s no way that his Nick Ahmed-like line is simply the function of a messed-up swing. There’s something physically wrong; there has to be.

The Cubs could say, “Whatever. We’re the best, so we can afford to keep a guy around who might get better.” But they could also say, “Look at how good we are without this guy contributing much. We could probably allocate that money better.” I’ll guess that they would do the latter, and try again this offseason.

Conclusion: Ditch

Oh, there were happy times in Kansas City when Gordon’s market sagged and he came back. He was exactly what they needed, and it’s hard to overstate what it looks like when a team can’t keep a homegrown hero on a championship roster. There’s an air of impermanence about the whole thing, fair or not.

That written, Gordon wasn’t good, and then he got hurt. Even worse, if Delmon Young were playing left field, Mike Moustakas wouldn’t have gotten hurt. You can make an argument that Gordon has hurt his team more than any other free agent in baseball. Oh, chaos theory. You got us again.

The money is fair enough and the player is popular enough, though, that the Royals probably aren’t freaking out too much. If they didn’t have Gordon, they would have had to trade prospects in a couple months to make up for the hole in the lineup.

Conclusion: Keep

Not to toot my own horn, but I nailed this one.

Don’t google it.

The Tigers are contending by the tips of their claws, and they aren’t that close without Zimmermann. His declining strikeout rate is strange, but the team took advantage of a market that was a little slow to establish itself, and they got him for relatively low money. Consider that the Cardinals got Mike Leake for $6 million less per year, even though there’s a substantial drop in talent between the two.

Conclusion: Keep

Cueto is likely going to San Diego for the All-Star Game, which is a good sign. He’s thrown 27 innings in three games against the Padres, and he’s allowed just one run. The Giants are in love with Cueto. The fans are in love with Cueto. What a magical fairy-tale!

Conclusion: Ditch

Waaaaait a second. That doesn’t make sense.

Conclusion: Ditch the opt-out clause after 2017

Ah, yeah, that’s reasonable. The biggest regret the Giants have is that Cueto is almost certainly going to test the market in 18 months, which will either force them to overpay even more for the downside of his career, or watch a newly minted fan favorite take his ball-pit majesty somewhere else.

Assuming Cueto keeps pitching well, the opt-out would mean the Giants got the equivalent of a two-year deal for an ace on the open market, which is the dream of every franchise. The only problem is if the ace actually pitches like an ace, it’s easy to have regrets.

OK, fine, that screenshot up there was from when I anointed the Upton deal the best of the offseason. It was supposed to be low risk! He had his health! He was just 28, with at least four or five years left of his prime!

There could be something in the Upton genetic code that unravels in the mid-20s, apparently, so stay away from them in free agency? I can’t explain it. Upton has been getting incrementally better since his low-water point of the season, and this month has started off fine, just fine. He’s averaging a strikeout per game in June instead of [checks] 37 per game, which is a substantial improvement, alright.

The appeal of Upton wasn’t that he was going to be a star, it’s that he was supposed to be the safest bet to provide value for the next few years. If the Tigers were bad enough to need a rebuilding or reloading project over the next three years, Upton would be young enough to help with that. The move was supposed to be safe, you have to believe me!

Conclusion: Ditch

We’re talking “Note: Justin Upton’s contract died on the way back to its home planet” kind of ditch. Upton has an opt-out after two years, but he’s the rare player who just might opt in.

The presence of an ill-timed opt-out makes this situation similar to Cueto’s, except the Mets probably think of that opt-out as a feature, not a bug. They were a Michael Cuddyer decision away from not having the money for Cespedes this year, and they’re almost certainly counting on him leaving after the season.

As is, he has 32 home runs with the Mets in 447 plate appearances. That’s some mighty fine dingering. You know there was someone in Detroit’s front office arguing vehemently for Cespedes over Upton. That person should get to use the other executives for piggyback rides on demand around the office.

Conclusion: Keep

What was in his medical report? Was there an I.O.U. in his shoulder? How can a pitcher this talented get a third of what Ian Kennedy gets, but with all sorts of options and rewards for the team if he actually succeeds?

Dunno, but the Dodgers are happy it turned out that way. There’s a catch, though, in that Maeda isn’t the burgeoning ace he looked like in April. The Dodgers are clearly being careful with him, limiting him to 90 pitches or so in most starts, and he’s more of a Mike Leake-type than a Kershaw complement.

He’s making $3.125 million plus incentives this year, though, so I’m pretty sure the Dodgers are still giggling about this contract.

Conclusion: Keep

The Orioles will pay for him later because they want home runs now. They’re keenly aware of the risks, but they’re accepting them because of dinger fever. And, look at that, they’re in first place because of their virtuosity in the home run arts.

But they’re doing it without Davis, mostly. They’re getting what they wanted from Davis from Mark Trumbo, and they’re getting what they wanted from Trumbo from Davis. They’re contending because of found money, not because of the $161 million they gave to their own free agent, and that money is substantial enough to affect their ability to keep Manny Machado around until there are flying cars.

It’s not an easy decision. If they knew the production they were going to get from Trumbo and Hyun Soo Kim, along with the predictable-as-all-heck struggles from some of their starting pitchers, they probably would have focused on two starters instead of one Chris Davis. At the same time, they’ll sure enjoy their second half a lot if Davis hits as well as they’re used to. There is still some serious potential for the short-term brilliance they were hoping for.

So we’ll give him a ...

Conclusion: Keep

... with an addendum that they would also jettison the contract after this season if he doesn’t pick it up. It looked like a collar-tugger of a deal when it was announced, and the first third of the season hasn’t made anyone feel more comfortable about the next six seasons.

Of course, teams didn’t base their free agent evaluations on my dumb rankings, which means there are some players who were paid more than some of the players up there. Lightning round!

Really, it’s not like this every year. There are usually a lot more instant regrets. But other than maybe Jason Heyward and possibly Justin Upton, this has been a free agent class with the regrets off in the distance. They’ll come clambering over the gates and eat our brains at some point, but it’s mostly peaceful right now.