3:36pm: Joel Sherman of the New York Post hears that one adjustment that has been discussed is that no player would be allowed to be tagged with a qualifying offer in consecutive seasons (Twitter links). That, of course, isn’t a lock to implemented this offseason — if at all — but could be applied from this point forth.
Of course, that adjustment would come with its own potential pitfalls. Many teams that part with a first-round pick to sign a free agent to a one-year deal, as the Rangers did with Desmond and the Cubs did with Fowler last offseason (technically speaking, anyhow, as they’d have netted a pick had he signed elsewhere), do so knowing that the sting will be lessened by the ability to extend a QO the following season in the event that the player performs well. Removing that incentive could make teams even more reluctant to sign borderline free agents coming off of a down season.
2:27pm: The qualifying offer is expected to rise to $17.2MM this offseason, according to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (via Twitter). He adds that the QO system is likely to “remain in place,” under the new CBA, albeit with certain “adjustments.”
The specific nature of said adjustments, of course, remains to be seen, but the new figure represents a fairly significant boost to last year’s qualifying offer value of $15.8MM. In fact, that $1.4MM jump in value is the largest single-year increase in the qualifying offer’s value since the system was first implemented in the 2012-13 offseason. In that first year of the system’s existence, the QO was valued at $13.3MM — a figure that rose to $14.1MM in the 2013-14 offseason, $15.3MM in the 2014-15 offseason and $15.8MM last winter. The stark increase in this year’s total is reflective of the overall rise in salaries throughout the game, as the QO’s value is determined by averaging the salaries of Major League Baseball’s 125 highest-paid players.
For those who aren’t familiar with the QO system or need a quick refresher, it’s fairly simple. Teams that wish to receive a compensatory draft pick for the departure of a free agent must extend a one-year “qualifying offer” to that free agent, who has a week to decide whether to accept or reject the QO. If the player accepts, he is considered signed for the following season and cannot be traded without his consent until the following June (as is the case with any free agent who signs a Major League contract in the offseason). If the player rejects the QO, then he may negotiate with all 30 teams, and the team that ultimately signs him must forfeit its top unprotected draft pick. (The top 10 selections in each year’s draft are protected, so some clubs may only need to part with a second-round pick.) If a team signs multiple free agents that rejected a qualifying offer, they forfeit their top remaining unprotected pick in each instance. Players are only eligible to receive a qualifying offer if they spent the entire season with the same team. (In other words, traded players and midseason signees cannot receive a QO.)
Until the 2015-16 offseason, no player had accepted a qualifying offer. Generally speaking, the downside to rejecting had been fairly minimal, at least in relation to the upside, as even those who rejected and found reluctance when negotiating with potential suitors still found one-year deals at or near the value of the qualifying offer (e.g. Ervin Santana signing for one year at $14.1MM with the Braves late in the 2013-14 offseason). However, last winter, the trio of Matt Wieters, Colby Rasmus and Brett Anderson accepted their QOs and locked in one-year, $15.8MM salaries for this season. With the continued rise of the offer’s value, it becomes more and more enticing for free agents to accept the deal — particularly those whose free-agent earning capacity is limited to a two- or three-year contract.
MLBTR’s Steve Adams recently ran down a list of potential qualifying offer candidates in the latest MLBTR Mailbag, noting that a handful of players — Yoenis Cespedes (once he opts out of his contract), Edwin Encarnacion, Kenley Jansen, Justin Turner, Jeremy Hellickson, Jose Bautista, Dexter Fowler and and Mark Trumbo — are locks to receive the offer. While not all of those players will necessarily receive a contract worth more than $17.2MM on an annual basis, each has a strong case for a free-agent deal of at least three years at a significant annual value — more than enough to outweigh the risk of playing one year at a higher rate but incurring an injury or notable downturn in performance that would cause his stock to diminish the following offseason.
There are plenty of other elements of the system, of course, and you can check out this old but comprehensive overview of the system for more. For an understanding of why the qualifying offer matters so much, you can refer to MLBTR owner Tim Dierkes’ previous explanation of why avoiding the qualifying offer is so important for a free agent’s value.
the qualifying system is the worst thing they have brought in. i would much rather see the old system in place
The old system was a bit before I started following baseball in general, and not just watching Sox games. What was it?
The Type A/B system was what they used to use. Potential FA were ranked according to position by I believe the Elias Bureau(not sure on that) and if they received Type A status, the players former team would receive the signing teams top unprotected pick plus a compensation pick between Round 1 and 2. A Type B free agent would net his former team a single comp pick.
It was an imperfect system and could be manipulated quite easily(Alex Anthopoulos was a big reason for the change).
I liked that system more than this one. The current system can hurt the players value too much if hit with a qualifying offer.
With the data we have now, I agree, the old system with minor tweaks would be better. But the old system also really hurt non-closing relievers so that’d be something that would need fixing.
I believe it was 2008 or 2009 – Juan Cruz. His free agent market was destroyed because he was a non-closing RP who had a statistically fantastic season. Unfortunately, no team was willing to give up their top unprotecting draft pick to sign him.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/10/olney-on-type-a-free-agents.html
The old system was horrific. The QO system is so much better than that disaster.
I agree, I liked it better even with the abuse, teams figured out how to not get abused in the process.
Actually I think the qualifying system is just now getting to the point where it is working. Players have started to take QO’s and both the players and the teams must heavily weigh their decisions regarding offers. No system will be perfect. This system is substantially better than the old system.
Jeez and to think that’s the starting point of negotiating a contract, it’s amazing as to how much these ball players make
It is a lot of money for sure, but I remind myself and others how much other “entertainers” make in TV and movies, and it’s usually much more than professional athletes.
And an “entertainer” can work until they’re past 90. With the exception of Bartolo Colon, that will never happen in MLB.
It’s a crazy world when you think about it!
The idea most likely is to keep the number high enough so teams don’t just offer a qualifying offer hoping the player declines just to get the draft pick if the player is signed by another team. Thus – making it harder for the player to sign because teams don’t want to pay out a big contract and lose a draft pick too. This rule really hurt players like Dexter Fowler who ended up playing for less than what he declined by the same team (The Cubs).
He should have accepted the QO
Fowler had a decision to make and he made the choice he did. He should have been aware of the possible risks and he chose to accept them. He ultimately has no one to blame but himself.
Not every decision we make in life will work out. Even ballplayers make poor decisions.
Dexter Fowler isn’t complaining one bit. He gambled and he’s going to win big this off-season.
True, but if he had taken the QO at first and still had the same season he did then he’d be a free agent still this offseason set to make a lot of money. I didn’t mean to imply that Fowler made a terrible decision or that he was hurt badly by his decision. Outlaws12 however seemed to state “This rule really hurt players like Dexter Fowler who ended up playing for less than what he declined by the same team (The Cubs).” Again I stand by my statement that Fowler ultimately has no one to blame but himself.
Ok, they really need to put a cap on that. There’s not a single team that would offer that to a reliever.
That’s generally why they instituted this new system. The old Type A/B system killed most relievers markets if they were Type A FA’s.
Yeah I remember, but this seems to be creating it’s own problems. Maybe if they revised the system to take into account the average pay by position.
I completely agree. I’m not a fan of this system and I actually thought the old A/B system just needed minor tweaks, such as disqualifying teams from “acquiring pick” like Alex Anthopoulos used to do. I’m just not sure how you’d fix the reliever issue under the A/B system though.
I agree with the idea behind your argument completely. The issue, however, is that the league might find it difficult to determine how a team is “acquiring picks” just to manipulate the system. For instance, AA could make up some phony reason for acquiring a player rather than publicly admitting he wanted to do it to acquire the pick.
(As a Jays fan, I found it actually funny how he manipulated the system though.)
NFL does this when calculating the the franchise tags.
The problem then gets to the level of compensation should a player turn down the QO and sign elsewhere – you would also have to weight the position/value to the draft pick forfeited. Nobody is going to give up a 1st rounder to sign a middle reliever with a QO attached to his name, even at a reasonable price.
Well I think you could fix the reliever issue by just declaring who’s a closer and who isn’t. A closer could be eligible for type A and a non-closer wouldn’t. You could set the bar with a certain number of games finished within a year and 3 years.
Because Tampa would offer it to every relief FA they had and buile their teams that way, like get 11 top 100 picks in 2011 and now they can’t new CBA rules?
That’s prime example numbers 1-100 of why the new CBA stinks.. Kills poor teams (tampa primo example) to get plenty of picks and STILL does nothing to curb salaries,
Tear it up, drag out the old one and sign a 5y extension, then the constant poor mouthing teams just hire more scouts.. Everything fixed.
Can somebody translate this guy’s rant into English?
I think that it means everyone needs to sign 5 year extensions before they are free agents.
Why not use the franchise tag method?
It should really be position based like the franchise tag in the NFL. In this system, it’s very hard to make this offer to most reliever.
Or they could do it like the NFL with supplemental picks based on the contracts that players leaving via FA get. Anyone team losing a player who signs a deal for 4 years gets a supplemental 1st, etc.
One of the largest flaws under the previous system was that relievers got screwed by draft pick compensation with regularity.
The Qualifying Offer system is intended to compensate teams only for losing their elite free agents — not that that has been the way it’s played out — which rarely means relievers. Kenley Jansen will still absolutely receive and reject a QO, and Aroldis Chapman would have as well if he hadn’t been traded.
I can see the point that the QO system discourages small-market teams from extending the offer to relievers, but that’s true of virtually all of their free agents, whether they’re a reliever or not. Hopefully, the difficulty this puts on small-market clubs is at least somewhat addressed in the “tweaks” mentioned by Rosenthal, as the system obviously hasn’t worked as well as it was hoped to when it was first implemented.
I was about to write this. Realistically, the system should provide compensation for only the top tier talent–the players most likely to be able to get a multi-year offer anyway. I’d also like to see it done away with for players over a certain age. There comes a point in your career where the next multi-year contract is your last one–you shouldn’t have an additional drag of draft-pick compensation.
I think the longer the QO system is in effect the more and more it will only be handed out to ‘top tier” players. Up until last off season teams just didn’t think players would seriously take the QO. Now obviously both the teams, and the players themselves will be more cautious about deciding how to handle a QO.
It definitely needs some adjustments. It was implemented to help the smaller market teams that couldn’t compete in free agency but at 17.2 its hard for them to risk it. Maybe take away the loss of a pick and just add a pick for the losing team. Its hard to find a perfect solution
J”oel Sherman of the New York Post hears that one adjustment that has been discussed is that no player would be allowed to be tagged with a qualifying offer in consecutive seasons”
Maybe they can make it so the same team cannot tag the same player in two consecutive seasons? Fixes the problem of the signing team not recouping the draft pick, and allows the player to not be “stuck” on the same team after taking a QO year after year.
I know it’s risky, but if those players take 2 QO’s they’ve almost made more than they would have in 4 years.
Typically these types of players are worth about 11 million a year, so 2/36 is better in the long run than 4/44.
Even if they get hurt and their stock falls to a bounce back of 6 million that’s still more than 2/22 and they get hit FA after a bounce back year.
The whole idea of this system would be that players like Weiters would accept and cause teams to respond by not offering as many the next time around.
This system is trash, go back to the old system!
The Cubs did not have to part with a first round draft pick for signing Fowler as he was their free agent. They did lost a pick because he didn’t sign with the Orioles as first reported.
Seems like a simple system that will be more balanced now players have set the precedent of accepting the offer.
It’s not like it’s a pittance. If you turn it down you take a chance. Stephen Drew, Kendrys Morales etc.
It’s a simple system that will even itself out now that the precedent has been set of players accepting it.
It’s not like it’s a pittance. Teams will have to be more sensible about offering the QO.
Players will just have to take their chance if they turn it down, being wary of Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales’ outcomes.
Wait, am I the only one that actually likes the new system?
1.. It’s transparent. It clearly allows teams (and fans) to understand why certain players require compensation to their old team. (The old team “tried” to retain the player, but could not..)
2. It means players are encouraged to stay with their current team, by reducing their worth to other teams. This may be unfair to the player, but it is good for the fans/owners: there is a built in home town discount on resigning bigger named free agents.
3. It compensates smaller market teams, like it’s supposed to.
There are undoubtedly some negatives – almost all to the players, but I don’t see how bringing back an A/B system which was somewhat arbitrary, and very opaque, solves any of the problems with the system in terms of fairness to the players.
I love the qualifying system as well, but I just think that it will still evolve in it’s effectiveness (especially after last season). It does everything more or less it was intended to do. There is however no perfect system.
I think the system’s failures are twofold. First, it depresses players’ values obviously, and it penalizes players who play for good teams. Secondly, I think it can be counterproductive with regards to competitive balance, because large-market teams can afford to take chances making the offers that small-market ones cannot. Personally, I’d rather just see a free-market once a player reaches 6 years of service
If I’m not mistaken one of the original intents of the QO was to help reduce salaries…so if it is depressing some players values then as you say then obviously it is doing the job. Secondly large market teams should always afford to take chances and make offers that small market ones cannot. That is one of the huge distinctions between the two. That would exist whether the QO system exists or not.
Large-market clubs will always have that advantage, no doubt. The original poster commented that “it compensates smaller-market teams, like it’s supposed to,” and I’m not sure that’s really the case. My biggest gripes honestly though are that it penalizes pending free agents on winning teams, and it rewards mediocre teams for losing games down the stretch (although it’s certainly not unique in that regard)
I do not believe Dexter Fowler is subject to the QO. If I remember correctly, there is a mutual option. If declined by either, he becomes a free agent…?
I just checked on Baseball Prospectus…there is an option for 2017.
Nobody is worth that much…….nobody. It’s garbage like this that makes it so hard for many of us to attend a Major League game.
And it just keeps going higher and higher and higher. Well, looks like it will be another season of minor league games again.
The old system was horrific.
The player Type A,, Type B rankings were heavily driven just by playing time as a key stat measure. There was no restriction for players traded so as mentioned some teams picked up players just to get the picks.. And a Type A FA earned both a 1st round and a supplemental pick – that would truly depress the FA signing ,market. for many now…
Remember this preceded .the draft slotting system where the pick value is a huge factor in draft management now, but all the teams losing FAs now get is a supplemental pick. .Players were ranked within their positions, but the comp didn’t vary, so the a middle reliever was as valuable as some everyday players.
The previous system resulted in the Rays getting 12 of the top 90 picks in 2011, with at least 6 of their 10 comp picks coming for relievers (Soriano – Rd 1 + supp as Type A -, Benoit, Balfour, Qualls, and Randy Choate). But he Rays kinda screwed the pooch that year.. Maybe it was a weird draft year, but they had some serious misses. – only 3 of the 12 (Guerreri, Mahtook, and Snell) are on their 40 man now. I’m sure they’d swap their their top 12 picks with Boston’s top 12 that year, which extended into Round 10 – Swihart, Owens, Bradley, Betts, and Shaw were among those Sox picks.
Maybe a more tiered system offering lower round comp picks for lesser FAs,, getting the signing teams round 1 pick (if unprotected) rather than a comp pick, and maybe some tiered QO contract level as the current system skews towards high priced players.. But most of this would benefit the teams, not the players. so there would have to be other considerations for the players as well.
It is also interesting that the QO is rising so much this year while total player compensation increased at 1/2 the growth % of the year prior. The rich are getting richer.