MLB free agency: Comparing Framber Valdez vs. Ranger Suárez, the two top pitchers

The 2025-26 class of free agents in Major League Baseball is perhaps not a particularly strong one when it comes to starting pitching. That, however, reflects a lack of depth for the most part. At the top end of those available starting pitchers are worthies that would stand out in most offseasons.

Let’s take two of those worthies: lefty Framber Valdez, who’s spent his entire career to date with the Astros, and fellow lefty Ranger Suárez, who at this writing is a Phillies lifer. By any standard, these two are among the best starting pitchers on the market right now, and the very similar nature of their careers to date means a more thorough comparison is in order.

Consider that each has pitched in the majors for parts of eight seasons with similar overall results. To wit, Valdez has an ERA+ of 124 for his MLB career to Suárez’s 125. On the WAR front, Valdez has a career mark of 18.9 to Suárez’s 17.8. As you can imagine, it’s a tough call when it comes to which hurler should be more prized on the market. 

At the outset, give Suárez a slight edge, as he’s more than a year younger than Valdez. Pitching, though, is more about skills retention than raw age. So if your team aspires to contend in 2026 and beyond and is willing to spend at the top of the rotation market this winter, which lefty should be prioritized? Let’s dig into the various categories. 

2025 performance

First, the more traditional measures: 

Some of the above metrics have value in terms of gauging value in the past season. Free agency, though, is about how track record informs future value, and for that we need different tools. For pitchers, that in part means looking at how well they fared at what they most directly control — striking out batters, avoiding walks, and limiting high-quality contact off the bat. You see hints of that above, but we need a different set of stats for this purpose. We’ll keep it mostly simple and use the following: 

• K%, or the pitcher’s strikeout rate expressed as a percentage of batters faced;
• K%-BB%, the pitcher’s walk rate subtracted from his strikeout rate;
• FIP (fielding-independent pitching), or what a pitcher’s ERA should be based on strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed and without the influences of luck and defense;
• xERA (expected ERA), or what a pitcher’s ERA should be based on his how often he allows contact and how dangerous that contact is when he does allow it. 

Now here’s how each lefty graded out last season according to those four indicators. 

As you can see above, they’re very similar in terms of K%, but Suárez prevails rather easily on the remaining fronts. Insofar as 2025 is concerned, it’s fair to say Suárez projects a bit better in terms of rate-based results. 

Performance over past three seasons

It’s not just about 2025, of course. Leaning on a single season of data to project outward, even when it’s the most recent season, isn’t the best approach. So let’s take the last three seasons and see how these moundsmen compare, again using the measures above. 

Here we see the advantage flip to Valdez, which in part reflects his stronger overall body of recent work compared to Suárez. It’s fair to emphasize the most recent season more than the last three years of work, but the larger sample should be noted and considered. 

Stuff

In terms of pitch mix, Valdez is sinker-heavy, which explains why he’s one of the best ground-ball artists around. His curve is his lead secondary offering and together those two pitches amounted to more than 75% of his total pitches. He also has a changeup that he uses against right-handed hitters. Suárez has a deeper and more balanced repertoire than Valdez does, but he also leads with his sinker. In terms of velocity, Valdez’s sinker averaged 94.3 mph this past season, while Suárez’s checked in at 90.1 mph (his four-seamer has better velo, with a 2025 average of 91.3 mph). 

To get a little deeper we’ll turn to a pitch-modeling tool called Stuff+. Stuff+ grades individual pitches based on traits like velocity, movement, spin rate, release point consistency, shape, and extension. It’s scaled so that 100 equals a league-average pitch of that specific type. Anything greater than 100 is better than average and anything less than 100 is worse.  On that front … 

• Valdez in 2025 had an overall Stuff+ of 108 and his curve boasted a Stuff+ of 128. 
• Suárez in 2025 had an overall Stuff+ of 96 and his slider had a Stuff+ of 119. However, Suárez last season threw the slider just 4% of the time. 

This amounts to an edge for Valdez. However, that gap narrows once you account for command as measured by the related statistic Location+. Location+ readings last season were in Suárez’s favor. 

Health and durability

As a major leaguer, Suárez has been on the injured list six times, but only one trip was for arm trouble (an elbow strain in 2022). As well, one of his IL stints was because of COVID. Valdez has made just two IL trips in his big-league career; only one was arm-related (elbow soreness early in the 2024 season). 

When it comes to workload, Suárez became a full-time starter prior to the 2022 season and since then he’s averaged 26 starts and 147 innings per year. His season high for innings is 157 ⅓ in 2025. Valdez since 2022 has averaged 30.3 starts per season and an impressive 191.8 innings per season over that span. In 2022, he topped out at an AL-leading 201 ⅓ innings.  

In the end, either is a worthy choice for any contender’s offseason dollars and, barring injury, each figures to greatly help the winning cause in 2026 and beyond. Suárez is a bit younger and had the better 2025, but Valdez is a modern workhorse with a stronger overall body of work. The guess here is that the market winds up preferring Valdez because of his durability and capacity to shoulder something of an old-school workload. The margins may be tight, though, as together they’re two of most similar free agents to come along in a while.