It’s rare that a player comes one home run shy of 50, and no one knows how to value him in free agency.

Seattle Mariners third baseman Eugenio Suárez has fallen into that category, as his excellent start to the season with the Arizona Diamondbacks tailed off after he arrived in the Pacific Northwest. He hit two heroic home runs in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, but on the whole, his second stint with the Mariners was a similar disappointment to the first.

Now entering his age-34 season, Suárez is facing a lot of questions about whether he can repeat his offensive production, as well as whether he can stick at third base. Will the next team that signs him wind up regretting it?

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Will Suárez justify a potentially high price tag?

That’s the thesis of ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel, who named Suárez as one of his free agents “to avoid” in a Thursday column. McDaniel had projected Suárez for a $45 million contract earlier this offseason, but argued he wasn’t worth the price tag.

“There are a lot of blinking red lights here,” McDaniel wrote. “(Suárez is) 34 years old, and his defensive metrics at third base have gone from +8 to +3 to -3 in the past three seasons.

“He has played six regular-season innings at first base in his big league career, so you’re either dealing with an aging, below-average defensive third baseman who you’re hoping to move somewhere else, paying big money for him to learn a new position on the fly, or you’re signing a designated hitter.”

There’s absolutely risk to bringing in an infielder in his mid-thirties from a defensive perspective, and the fact that Suárez finished the season with an on-base percentage below .300 is a concern as well.

That said, are we as an industry collectively starting to underrate a hitter of Suárez’s profile? It seems as though the home run ball is only getting more important, especially in the playoffs, and only four players hit more long balls than Suárez this year — the top two Most Valuable Player finishers in each league.

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