The qualifying offer system has been in place since the 2012-13 offseason, and this winter, we saw the most ever free agents receive offers – a whopping 20 players. The previous high was 13 back in the 2013-14 offseason, and 12 received offers last year.
Here’s the full list, via MLB Trade Rumors.
-Brett Anderson
-Wei-Yin Chen
-Chris Davis
-Ian Desmond
-Marco Estrada
-Dexter Fowler
-Yovani Gallardo
-Alex Gordon
-Zack Greinke
-Jason Heyward
-Hisashi Iwakuma
-Howie Kendrick
-Ian Kennedy
-John Lackey
-Daniel Murphy
-Colby Rasmus
-Jeff Samardzija
-Justin Upton
-Matt Wieters
-Jordan Zimmermann
The value of the qualifying offer this year is set at $15.8 million, and players have until next Friday to accept the one-year deal for that amount. If any team signs a player who received a qualifying offer, they most forfeit a draft pick – the first round pick for teams outside of the top ten of next June’s MLB Draft, and the second round pick for teams that pick in the top ten. If a team signs multiple players who receive qualifying offers, they lose multiple draft picks.
Players that haven’t spent the entire year with one team aren’t eligible to receive qualifying offers, which is why players like Johnny Cueto, David Price, and Ben Zobrist (among others) aren’t on the list.
When a player that received a qualifying offer signs with another team, his old team receives a draft pick at the end of the round in which the pick was sacrificed – if a team loses a first round pick, the player’s old team gets a pick at the end of the first round, and so on and so forth.
No player has ever accepted a qualifying offer, but we could see that happen this year. Brett Anderson, Marco Estrada, Ian Kennedy, Daniel Murphy, Colby Rasmus, and Matt Wieters seem like the players most likely to take the one-year deal.
We’ve also seen players that receive (and reject) qualifying offers struggle in the free agent market. In recent years, Stephen Drew, Matt Garza, Ubaldo Jimenez, Kyle Lohse, Kendrys Morales, and Ervin Santana have had to wait a significant amount of time to sign because of the draft pick compensation tied to them, with Drew and Morales not signing until after the season already began in 2014. Players like Davis, Heyward, Gordon, and Greinke won’t have any issues finding suitors willing to give up draft picks, but the aforementioned players (Anderson, Estrada, etc) that could accept the qualifying offer are guys who could see their markets fail to materialize because of the draft pick compensation tied to them.
Buckle up, folks – the offseason is officially upon us.
