A year after moving on from franchise icon Pete Alonso, the New York Mets still don’t have first base settled, and that makes the upcoming free-agent market worth watching closely.
Jorge Polanco’s first season with the Mets went off the rails, both in terms of performance and health. Jared Young, meanwhile, put together a breakout 2026 season with a .759 OPS, but the Mets would be pushing their luck if they simply handed him the job for 2027.
Young still figures to be part of the picture next year, whether that’s in a platoon role or as a valuable bench piece. Polanco’s future is murkier.
So if the Mets want competition at first base, these four pending free agents stand out.
Ty France is the cleanest bet of the group, even if his current level comes with obvious warning signs. The 31-year-old is having the best offensive season of his career with the San Diego Padres, hitting a little over .300 with an OPS nearing .900 after signing for just $1.35 million.
That’s a huge jump from the .675 OPS he posted across the 2024 and 2025 seasons combined, so some regression feels likely. Still, France has been steady all year long, producing against both right-handers and left-handers and posting at least an .800 OPS in every month this season.
He’s also been almost split-proof home and away, and his defense has held up too, with 9 outs above average placing him in the 94th percentile, per Baseball Savant.
If France looks like a high-floor option, Alec Bohm feels more like a stabilizer with a narrower path to impact. The Philadelphia Phillies corner infielder is sitting on an OPS a little above .700 this year, a step down from where he’s been at his best, though he did make the All-Star team two years ago and owns a career .274 average.
Bohm’s best season still stands out - his .881 OPS in 2020 - and he hasn’t quite matched that ceiling since. His next-best OPS is .779, which is solid, but his defensive issues and tendency to pound the ball into double plays have made him a less certain fit in Philadelphia.
Even so, he remains a tough out who makes contact, avoids strikeouts and has boosted his walk total to a career-high 45 this season. His best fit for the Mets would probably be as a platoon bat against lefties, since his OPS versus lefties is about .170 points better than it is against righties.
Josh Bell brings a different kind of profile: proven production and reliability. The 34-year-old has bounced around in recent years, but he has still managed to keep an OPS+ of at least 100 in every full season of his career.
With the Minnesota Twins this year, he’s posted a .741 OPS, the same level he delivered a season ago. Bell has also supplied pop, with at least 20 home runs in each of the last two seasons and in four of his last six.
His 91 RBIs are the second-most he has ever driven in. Defense is not his selling point, and he has mostly lived as a DH over the past two seasons, appearing in only 53 games at first base combined in 2025 and 2026.
The Mets could use him in that same kind of role, giving him some time at first and letting the bat do most of the work as the DH. David Stearns tends to lean defensive, which may keep Bell from the top of the list, but the Mets have enough unsettled spots that his bat should still be in the conversation.
Jake Bauers is the most unusual name here, but also one of the most compelling. He’s a left-handed bat, which makes him a tricky fit next to Jared Young on paper, but his 2026 breakout may be too strong to ignore.
Bauers, who turns 31 soon, is headed for a significant raise after earning just $2.7 million this year. He has 26 home runs, 83 RBIs and leads the NL in on-base percentage, reaching at nearly a .400 clip.
Milwaukee has watched him improve in each of his three seasons there, and the Brewers’ reputation for developing hitters shows up in his numbers. His underlying metrics point to a hitter who has been among the league’s best in almost every offensive area aside from swing-and-miss.
He strikes out a lot, but he also walks a lot and hits the ball extremely hard. The glove is the drawback, since he leads the league with eight errors at first base.
Still, he adds corner outfield versatility, which could help the Mets if they want to give Juan Soto more rest. Bauers is the biggest wild card of the group because of the age, the breakout and the price tag that could come with it, but the production is loud enough to demand attention.
stats are current as of Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 22
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