Jake Arrieta, Wade Davis, Lance Lynn, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Alex Cobb, Greg Holland, and Carlos Santana received one-year, $17.4MM qualifying offers from their teams earlier this week. If those players sign elsewhere, here’s a look at the draft picks the signing team would lose.
Competitive Balance Tax Payors: Tigers, Dodgers, Yankees, Giants, Nationals
If one of these teams signs a qualified free agent, it must forfeit its second-highest and fifth-highest pick in the 2018 draft. The team will also have its international signing bonus pool reduced by $1MM. The Tigers are highly unlikely to sign one of the nine players listed above, but the other four teams might. The Giants’ second-highest pick will fall somewhere in the 30s overall, so they stand to lose the most if they sign a qualified free agent.
Non-Disqualified Revenue Sharing Payees: Diamondbacks, Braves, Orioles, Reds, Indians, Rockies, Astros, Royals, Marlins, Brewers, Twins, Athletics, Pirates, Padres, Mariners, Rays
These 16 teams received revenue sharing and did not exceed the competitive balance tax. If one of these teams signs a qualified free agent, it forfeits its third-highest pick. These teams face the smallest draft pick penalty.
All Other Clubs: Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Angels, Mets, Phillies, Cardinals, Rangers, Blue Jays
These nine remaining teams would forfeit their second-highest pick and and have their international signing bonus pool reduced by $500K. The penalty is something of a middle ground, but it would sting for a team like the Phillies to sacrifice a pick in the 30s.
What happens if a team signs two of these nine free agents? The CBA calls for forfeiture of the next highest available draft pick. For example, if a team has already lost its second and fifth-highest picks and it signs a second qualified free agent, it would lose its third and sixth-highest picks. So as in the past, if you’ve already signed one qualified free agent, the draft pick cost to sign another is reduced.
RELATED: Examining Draft Pick Compensation For The 6 Teams That Could Lose Qualified Free Agents
The team in the 4th largest city in America received revenue? This system is so broken.
There’s actually nothing wrong with the revenue sharing system. I’m assuming you’re complaining about Houston, and while it is the 4th largest city in America, it was the 15th largest MLB market (right in the middle) as of 2012, and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly where it remains today.
yeah but the system really is broken – especially when you take into account compensation pics, look at someone like the cardinals which is still listed as a small market team or the A’s and phillies which are listed as big market teams – it matters because if a ‘small market’ team loses a pick on a signing a QO it has less of an impact than it does to a ‘large market’ team that performs poorly
phillies are a big market team
that is what I said – A’s and phillies are bad ‘big market’ teams the cards should be a big market team not a small market team. When a big market team is bad it is a really deep hole to get out of because you need to either blow up the whole team over and over again till you randomly get some prospects that work right (with limited numbers of prospects) or continue to spend and spend outside the tax – either the tax needs to go away or compensation should be based on performance and inventory, not how close the stadium is to a population of residencies, otherwise parity only applies to those that don’t have a population close to the ballpark and teams like the dodgers, yankees and red sox that have used spending power to bend the rules and blow past the tax- big market failing teams like the phillies, giants, brave and middle teams like mariners and padres have such a larger hole to dig out of than say the cards when things go wrong.
Oakland is sharing the sixth largest market with the Giants who totally dominate. That effectively leaves the A’s as a small market/revenue team.
The Phillies on the other hand own the fourth largest media market to themselves. The Phillies probably were the most profitable team in MLB this year and figure to be so again in 2018.
Yes there is. The Cardinals before the scandal were constantly awarded free picks that were basically first rounders. Only very few teams should receive the benefits and the cardinals and astros are not one of them.
Cry me a river, the Cardinals do play in a bottom half small market. They shouldn’t get penalized because the fans actually support the team.
Except they’re actually not, because the term “market” is being misapplied in their circumstance. Just because their city’s in the bottom half of MLB metro sizes doesn’t mean they’re not the only team for a wide swath of the Midwest. Both from a population standpoint and from an area standpoint, the Cardinals have one of the larger “home” markets.
if fans support the team and spend…. it isn’t a small market. small marked the way it sits is based on geography but geography doesn’t affect how many people watch, buy merch for, travel to the ballpark anyways…. when is the last time you saw an empty seat in busch? all of that puts the same money in the pockets of the team as it does for any other team marked as a ‘big market’ team.
I’d like to remind you the Kansas City Royals play just 241 miles away.
I believe in this case, market size has a lot to do with the amount of revenue the team pulls in. Assuming that’s true, “market size” certainly isn’t being misapplied.
cubs are kinda close also
Cardinals have no issues handing out big contracts. Cards were extremely close to landing David Price at 200 million. They are also said to be in hard on Stanton. They have the resources to make big market moves. Its hilarious how their owners and fans like to pretend they are a small market team
Not getting an extra first round pick wouldn’t be “penalizing” them; it’d put them exactly where the majority of MLB teams are. If the MLB took away one of their actual picks, that’d be a penalty.
Teams with that kind of revenue shouldn’t be given free draft picks because they are in a “small” market. I’m pretty sure that 99.9% of people that don’t understand that work for the MLB or are Cardinals fans.
Lol just penalized because their employees hack other teams then?
any time a team wins or play in the worlds series they should not get revenue sharing in the following year.
Revenue sharing is based on revenue..
So the teams that bring in the least amount of money are the ones receiving money from the pool.
A lot of this has to do with ticket sales and television contracts, not the size of the market.
With that being said, “big market teams” usually have an easier time securing lucrative long-term television deals like the Dodgers, Giants and Phillies.
This isn’t always true. The Giants are so heavily favored in their market that the A’s suffer. Revenue sharing is supposed to fix this but the A’s ownership refuses to spend money or compete so their being cut off from revenue sharing.
So the Mariners won’t lose too high of a pick, they need to sign Darvish, or at least Cobb or Lynn. If they have any chance of competing with the Red Sox, Yankees, Twins, Angels, or Rangers for a wildcard they’re going to need a much better rotation. Injury’s did deplete the original rotation, but I’m not so sure that Felix, Paxton, Smiley, Iwakuma and Gallardo would have been so good over a full season either.
The offense won’t be great, but it will be good enough next season. Like I said, they need a strong rotation, Darvish, Paxton, Leake, Felix and Moore/Gonzalez/Ramirez/Miranda/Lynn/Cobb would be way better than last season.
And if Darvish helps sign Ohtani, that’s even better, but I guess Ohtani is already a Yankee if you only read these comments.
Great article, I kind of feel bad for the “All other clubs segment”. Everyone except the White Sox and Phillies are at least hopeful playoff contenders. Angels in particular will have to pay the piper down the line if they sign 2 of these players, losing picks 2/3/5/6 would be devastating if the team crashes down after Trouts contract. Then again it balances out with only 8 maybe 9 players costing a penalty, as opposed to seemingly dozens in the past.
The Cubs are going to get a couple of second round comp picks and can’t spend big in the int’l market anyway. They can sign one of Cobb or Lynn if they don’t re-sign Jake and won’t feel it too badly in next year’s draft.
Amazing that the MLBPA gave up so much in the CBA to receive such small improvements on the QO/compensation issue.
Look at the dollar amount of the offer and tell me that it doesn’t also benefit the players.
We are talking about roughly a dozen players a year. The true soft spot in MLB salary structure is in the pre and early arb years.
Baseball players are paid backwards. Mike Trout should have been paid fifty million in his second full season.
Teams no longer having to worry about losing a strong first round pick was a major issue. The MLBPA got that concession and reall, the teams get nothing in return. No longer will major market teams have to be worried about signing a QO player, at least not when it comes to where the overwhelming majority of the talent lies.
Not only would the Giants have to sign Lorenzo Cain to a big contract, but they’d have to give up the #30-something pick, a 5th round pick, and $1MM of international signing bonus money. Yeeeeouch. Not worth it IMO.
agree – the giants ought to stay way from that list and trade to get someone who just doesn’t suck rather than lose any picks – the farm is pretty horrible right now
Most picks are overrated. Lorenzo Cain over the next 5 years is likely to accumulate more collective WAR than both picks + the international players combined.
Kind of funny stuff there.. The guy is Michael Bourn all over again and as soon as his legs go (like Bourn), so does 100% of Cain’s value. He’s not some kind of hitter, like Ellsbury a little while his legs have mostly gone AWOL and become a 140m DOA contract.
Just my opinion but I do NOT see the Yankees signing any of the players that received a QO.
I think if you are losing a QO free agent and you sign a different QO free agent, you shouldn’t lose anything or gain anything in terms of draft picks or international money. Using the Cards as an example (b/c they’re my team), if Lynn goes elsewhere for $60 million, they get a Comp round B pick, and if they sign Holland for $50 million, they lose their second highest pick and $500k. If they just sign Lynn for $60, they lose/gain nothing. It’s a weird quirk that because they might prefer to sign Holland over Lynn, their draft situation (and international pool) gets shaken up so much.
BTW all this holds true if the qualified free agent is signed for more than $50 million, right? Also can someone please explain the different tiers? Why is a team classified as comp balance tax payor or any other category?
look, its not hard
say team a signs a player from team b with a QO.
team b gets extra picks between the 3rd and 5th round which pushes back team a picks.
team a also loses money from their draft allotment for signing the player equal to the amount team b gets, which affects their picks as well while giving team b more money to get guys.
if baseball would just get a salary cap like every pro sports league we wouldn’t have anything to discuss would we.
Well where’s the fun in that?
I see the Astros making a play at Wade Davis, especially if they only have to give up a 3rd rounder.