As the Yankees and the Mets are absorbed by planning out their playoff rosters, the also-ran teams are already thinking about next year and how they’re going to knock these New York juggernauts off their respective pedestals.

It’s too early to talk trades, so the general managers who won’t be getting October parades are fantasizing about being November heroes with a big free agent signing. The problem is that the pool of franchise-changing players — those free agent acquisitions that hold the promise of changing a team’s outlook and energizing its fan base — is quite small. There will be some players who seem to hold that promise but because of age, injury history, or both, they represent real gambles.

Sure, a team could sign Frank Thomas and hope to receive what the A’s did this year, but they are more likely to get what the White Sox did for two years before that, which is a whole lot of Big Hurt on the trainer’s table. Maybe Roger Clemens will choose to pitch next year and will be willing to come to your team, but at some point he’s going to start pitching like the 44-year-old that he is. That might still be a risk worth taking, except that he’ll cost just as much as it will to sign a 27-year-old.

Only two players likely to be available this winter appear to exist at the nexus of the age/talent sweet spot. Lefty Barry Zito seems to be the only pitcher of that quality, and that doesn’t seem like a sure thing. The other is Alfonso Soriano, the Washington Nationals’ left fielder.

Soriano has had quite a year. Reluctantly liberated from second base, where his range had diminished to the point where the phrase “grounder in the hole”had come to mean any ball hit more than two steps away from where he was standing, Soriano’s bat has blossomed in Washington. Although in Texas, Soriano’s offense was increasingly a gift of his home park, the normally unforgiving RFK Stadium has been no impediment. He’s hit a career high 46 home runs. Thanks to a careerhigh 63 walks, a figure which nearly equals his that of his last two years combined, Soriano boasts a career-high .357 on-base percentage. Thanks to his speed and National League batting orders, he’s hit into just two double plays (he’s batted with just 331 runners on base, 190 fewer than major league leader Alex Rodriguez). He’s also thrown out 22 runners on the bases.

Speculation abounds as to Soriano’s eventual destination, be it a return to New York with the Mets, a trip up I-95 to Baltimore, or a long-term stay in Washington. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Baltimore will make acquiring Soriano a priority.

The Baltimore franchise has got its ornithological underpinnings confused. They’re acting more like magpies, the bird with a tendency to be distracted by shiny baubles, than Orioles. Soriano would do little to close the talent gap with the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Blue Jays.

Even with Soriano in left field, the Orioles would still be short a first baseman, several pitchers, and a bench. They are also going to be in need of a third baseman, even though they recently extended Melvin Mora’s contract until the end of time. Thirty-five next year, Mora is heading for the last round-up. These things do not exist in the Sahara-like Orioles farm system that is only as deep as outfielder Jeff Fiorentino and pitcher Radhames Liz. Thirty-one years old in 2007, Soriano won’t be good long enough for the Orioles to surround him with a solid supporting cast.

That’s if he’s worth building around in the first place. Soriano is having a career year at 30. Players who establish new norms of performance in their baseball middle age are few and far between, making Soriano a very strong bet to regress to his 2004–2005 form. Those seasons look superficially good, but when you strip away park effects and consider Soriano’s career-long impatience, they prove to be less than advertised.

There are also several aspects of Soriano’s 2006 performance that may prove to be single-season mirages. His total of 22 assists is astounding, but more reflective of runners testing his inexperience than any real fielding acumen. More significantly, his newfound patience is solely the result of his being the biggest bat in a weak Washington lineup. Soriano has been intentionally walked 15 times, more than double the total of the last two seasons combined, and has been pitched around on many other occasions.

Returned to the American League, with its deeper lineups, or placed somewhere in the solid Mets batting order (presumably not leadoff since Jose Reyes owns that spot), the incentive to pitch around him would disappear, returning him to his normal, inadequate 33 walks a year. Soriano has been below average in reaching base in most seasons and will very likely be again next year if he chooses to depart the nation’s capital.

The Mets will need an outfielder. Carlos Beltran aside, this year’s outfield patchwork is unlikely to work for a second year in a row. It is presumed that the declining Cliff Floyd will not return. The odds are strongly against Endy Chavez chipping in another .300 average. Lastings Milledge may not yet be ready. Shawn Green will probably not hit well. The team will need another bat in left field (using Soriano at second base would be a mistake).

Soriano could be the man for the job, but he could also be an expensive disappointment, a player whose production is just so-so, whose contract has the Mets paying for his decline phase, suckered in by a late-career peak.

For the Orioles, taking that kind of gamble is pointless and foolhardy. For the Mets, the potential reward in a return trip to the postseason may make it worth the risk — but if a younger, more predictable solution can be found, it should be embraced, even if said player is seemingly less spectacular than Soriano.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for www.yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.