Seven high profile players turned down their qualifying offers from their respective clubs on Tuesday and will officially join this season’s free agent class.
Amongst the the big names who opted for free agency were Shohei Ohtani (LAA), Cody Bellinger (CHC), Josh Hader (SD), Blake Snell (SD), Aaron Nola (PHI), Sonny Gray (MIN), and Matt Chapman (TOR). Some other notable names that will be on the open market this winter are pitchers Eduardo Rodriguez, Jordan Montgomery and Japanese star Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Since first being implemented following the 2012 MLB campaign, only 10 out of 131 qualifying offers have been accepted. Most recently Martin Perez and Joc Pederson were two such examples last offseason.
While seemingly just a formality, clubs actually benefit from the process by receiving an additional draft pick in the following year’s MLB draft should their former player sign elsewhere in the offseason.
Once a player receives a qualifying offer from their team, calculated by taking the average of the top 125 contracts in terms of AAV, they have one week to gauge the market to determine whether they stand to gain more money by hitting free agency or accepting the one year deal. This year’s qualifying offer level was set at $20.325M.
Because the Blue Jays, Padres, and Phillies all paid competitive balance taxes in 2023, they will receive a pick in the 5th round or later in next year’s draft should their players elect to sign elsewhere. Chicago will receive a draft pick before the 3rd round as they didn’t pay CBT nor did they receive revenue sharing in 2023. Meanwhile Minnesota will receive a pick based on the size of the contract that Gray signs with another club.
Which leaves the Angels. Not only do they face the unenviable prospect of losing a generational talent for nothing after their ill-fated “all-in” move at the trade deadline, but the status of their potential draft pick is also up in the air. Because Los Angeles was over the CBT threshold, they made a late season salary dump by placing several high profile players on waivers in an attempt to get under the limit. Major League Baseball hasn’t officially announced whether they dumped enough salary to get under the threshold as of yet, and the public won’t know until that balance is calculated in December.
All that to say, they now face the very real chance that they could watch Ohtani walk, and still get hit with a draft pick 60 selections later than they would have liked to boot.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.