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Early Qualifying Offer Decisions

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Fourteen players were issued the $18.4MM qualifying offer before the November 7 deadline. Those players have until November 17 to gauge interest on the open market before determining whether to accept or reject that proposal. For the majority of qualified free agents, it’ll be a fairly easy decision to reject the one-year offer and set out in search of a multi-year deal.

We’ll keep track of QO decisions as they’re reported in this post.

Rejected QO

Decision Not Yet Reported

Teams are entitled to 2022 draft pick compensation for qualified free agents who sign elsewhere, with the value of the pick dependent on the team’s economic status. Teams that exceeded the luxury tax threshold in 2021 (only believed to be the Dodgers among teams with qualified free agents this offseason) receive a pick after Round 4. Teams that neither exceeded the tax threshold nor received revenue sharing in 2021 (Angels, Astros, Blue Jays, Braves, Giants, Mets, Red Sox) would receive a draft choice after Competitive Balance Round B. Teams that received revenue sharing in 2021 (Reds and Rockies) would receive a draft choice after Round 1 if the qualified free agent signed for a guarantee of $50+MM. If the free agent signs for less than $50MM, that team would receive a draft choice after Competitive Balance Round B.

Last month, MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes broke down the penalties each team would incur were they to sign a player who’d rejected a qualifying offer.

Latest On Eduardo Rodriguez

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Eduardo Rodriguez has until November 17 to decide whether or not to accept the $18.4MM qualifying offer extended to him by the Red Sox, but seems to be garnering a decent amount of attention from other clubs in the meantime. MLB Network’s Jon Morosi reports that the Blue Jays, Angels and Tigers are interested in the lefty, who turns 29 in April.

The free agency of Rodriguez is an interesting case, as there’s a disconnect between his surface results and underlying numbers. In 2021, he had a strikeout rate of 27.4%, walk rate of 7.0% and groundball rate of 43.2%, all of those numbers being better than league average. Despite all of that, his ERA was a lofty 4.74. However, there seems to be quite a bit of bad luck in there, as his BABIP of .363 was much higher than his previous seasons, and all the advanced metrics seemed to think he deserved an ERA closer to the 3.50 range. MLBTR recently predicted that teams would see past that ERA, with Rodriguez getting a contract in the range of five years, $70MM, and this early interest seems to suggest that may be the case. Since extending that one-year qualifying offer, it has been revealed that the Red Sox added a multi-year offer to the table, and the interest of the Angels had been previously reported as well.

The fact that the Blue Jays are interested is hardly surprising, given their rotation situation. Fellow lefties Robbie Ray and Steven Matz have both entered free agency, leaving Toronto with a top-heavy rotation of Jose Berrios, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Alek Manoah, with two spots available for options such as Ross Stripling, Nate Pearson, Thomas Hatch and Anthony Kay. They are also very familiar with Rodriguez by virtue of his pitching for their division rivals over the entirety of his career thus far. The Blue Jays figure to consider all options to bolster their pitching staff, and have already been connected to the Justin Verlander showcase as well as making a strong offer to Andrew Heaney in the early days of this offseason.

As for the Tigers, they are looking to jump out of their rebuild and into contention for 2022. After an awful April in 2021 where they went 8-19, the club went 69-66 the rest of the way, which perhaps suggests they were a better club than their 77-85 record would indicate. It could be a very busy offseason for the Tigers, as Morosi also says they’re open to adding a shortstop and an outfielder. Their current rotation primarily consists of young and still-developing hurlers like Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning. They’ve likely lost Spencer Turnbull for 2021 due to Tommy John surgery and perhaps lost Matthew Boyd to flexor tendon surgery, creating the need for a veteran contributor like Rodriguez. Like the Blue Jays, they have also been frequently mentioned in rumors so far, being represented at the aforementioned Verlander showcase, as well as showing interest in Anthony DeSclafani and Jon Gray.

Blue Jays Made "Strong Offer" To Andrew Heaney

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  • The Blue Jays’ interest in Andrew Heaney included “a strong offer” for the lefty’s services before Heaney signed with the Dodgers, Sportsnet.ca’s Shi Davidi writes.  Despite a rough 2021 season, Heaney’s peripherals were intriguing enough that Toronto, Los Angeles, and at least two other teams were known to be considering a signing.

GM Ross Atkins On Blue Jays’ Winter Goals

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The Blue Jays would love to add an infielder to complement their current mix of young gloves in the dirt, but it’s not a necessity, says GM Ross Atkins, per Scott Mitchell of TSN. That includes, of course, a potential reunion with Marcus Semien, though having a versatile defensive player like Cavan Biggio on the roster gives Atkins some flexibility. Filling Semien’s spot at the keystone is the natural place to add an infielder, but Biggio could slide to second, opening the hot corner for a bigger fish like Matt Chapman of the A’s, whom Mitchell speculates could be a target.

Of course, injuries limited the 26-year-old Biggio to just 79 games last season and a .224/.322/.356 batting line, so an argument could be made to look for an upgrade at third base regardless of what happens at second. Wherever they make additions, for the second consecutive winter, the Blue Jays are no doubt buyers in this free agent market. If not another infielder, Toronto will surely explore rotation and bullpen upgrades, notes Mitchell.

Specifically, Atkins did not rule out getting a more established closer that might bump Jordan Romano from the role that he stepped into last season. Romano notched 23 games for the Jays last season, but he also picked up a handful of holds while only recording a single blown save. Steady as he was, there is no such thing as too many high leverage arms.

Several High-End Free Agents Could Sign Before CBA Expires

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The 2021-22 offseason is unlike any we’ve seen in recent history, with players and teams somewhat flying blind as the expiration of the 2016-21 collective bargaining agreement looms at 11:59pm ET on Dec. 1. Because of the widely expected lockout and uncertainty as to what changes will be made to key economic facets of Major League Baseball — the luxury tax, the arbitration system, the potential implementation of a salary floor — there’s been fairly prevalent speculation that the majority of major free-agent dealings would only occur after a lockout has been resolved.

That’s not necessarily the case, ESPN’s Jeff Passan writes in his takeaway column from this week’s GM Meetings in California. To the contrary, there’s a sense that top free agents Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and a few prominent starting pitchers could come off the board while the current CBA is still in play. Similarly, some in the industry expect that at least some of the offseason’s most aggressive teams (e.g. Rangers, Tigers, Mariners, Blue Jays) could be highly active in the days and hours leading up to the current agreement’s expiration, per Passan.

To some extent, it’s only logical to see the markets for certain top-of-the-scale free agents crystallize more quickly than others. Seager is one of the top two names on the market, while Semien is coming off the best season of any of the “second tier” of shortstops — those expected to sign north of $100MM but well beneath the likely $300MM+ price range of Seager and Carlos Correa.

Demand figures to be robust for both Seager and Semien. And, with likely interest from teams that won’t have immediate luxury-tax concerns regardless of who they sign, thanks to fairly wide-open payroll outlays, not every interested team will be overly concerned with waiting to see how the luxury tax unfolds. A lack of luxury-tax concern among Texas, Detroit, Seattle and Toronto surely dovetails with expectations that they could act more quickly than, say, the Yankees or Dodgers — both of whom will be keenly interested in the particulars of a restructured competitive balance tax.

Both Seager and Semien are of interest to the Yankees, Passan reemphasizes, though that much is well known by this point. Yankees GM Brian Cashman effectively kicked off the team’s offseason by announcing his desire to improve at shortstop, and it’d frankly be more surprising to learn that the Yanks were “out” on any one of the top free-agent shortstops than to hear they’re still in the mix.

There’s certainly no guarantee that either Seager or Semien will sign prior to Dec. 1, but it’s also in many ways sensible for both teams and players to want to strike early. Assuming there is indeed a lockout, MLB free agency would resume at a rather frenzied pace. There’d be obvious benefit to teams having cost certainty and avoiding some of that chaos by checking a big-ticket item off the list early in the process. From the players’ vantage point, there has to be concern about getting lost in the shuffle — particularly among second- or third-tier names. Furthermore, as is the case every winter, free agents tend to prefer the certainty of knowing where they (and their families) will be for the foreseeable future.

Even from an agency standpoint, early deals make some sense, if the demand is sufficient enough to drum up a palatable offer. For instance, the Boras Corporation represents both Seager and Semien, but they’ll also be negotiating deals for Max Scherzer, Nick Castellanos, Michael Conforto, Carlos Rodon, Yusei Kikuchi and James Paxton, among others. It’s a lot to juggle in what would be a condensed free-agent period, post-lockout. It’s easy to see the appeal of an early contract or two for any agency with a lengthy client list this winter.

To this point, there’s been little in the way of actual activity, save for a trio of  one-year deals for Andrew Heaney (Dodgers), T.J. McFarland (Cardinals) and Joely Rodriguez (Yankees). Teams and agencies acting with a bit of increased urgency, however, carries the potential for a perhaps brief flurry of deals in the next three weeks, even if the prevailing wisdom is that the majority of the offseason’s heavy lifting will come in the wake of, and not in advance of, a lockout and subsequent transaction freeze.

Brett Cecil Announces Retirement

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Left-handed reliever Brett Cecil took to Instagram this week to announce his retirement from baseball. In a lengthy statement, Cecil thanked his family, his representatives at ACES and both Major League teams for which he pitched: the Blue Jays and the Cardinals.

Brett Cecil

Cecil, 35, hasn’t pitched in the Majors since the 2018 season, although that’s not for lack of effort. The southpaw signed a four-year contract with the Cardinals in the 2016-17 offseason and turned in a solid first year in St. Louis before injuries completely derailed his time with the organization. A shoulder strain landed Cecil on the injured list after his first appearance of the 2018 season. He missed more than a month with that injury and spent another month on the shelf due to a foot strain later that year.

The 2019 season was a complete wash for Cecil, who underwent surgery to alleviate carpal tunnel syndrome in his pitching hand early in the year. He wasn’t able to make it back to the mound in ’19, and his 2020 season never got off the ground. Cecil suffered what the team termed a “significant” hamstring strain in Spring Training, not long before the league shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He’d made it back to the mound and was reportedly exploring a new sidearm delivery when MLB clubs began their “Summer Camp” in advance of the shortened season. The Cardinals cut him loose prior to the new Opening Day in what would have been the final season of that four-year, $30.5MM contract, however. He did not sign with a team for the 2021 season.

Cecil’s run in St. Louis clearly didn’t go as hoped, but the injury-plagued nature of that contract tends to overshadow the quality results he’d enjoyed in Toronto prior to signing that deal. Cecil had a bit of success as a starter with the Jays in 2010-11, pitching to a 4.43 ERA in 296 1/3 innings over the life of 48 starts. That two-year period even included a pair of complete games — one of them his lone MLB shutout. The left-hander’s career truly took off with a full-time move to the bullpen, however.

From 2013-16, Cecil pitched to a 2.90 ERA with a sizable 51.2% ground-ball rate, a massive 30.5% strikeout rate and a solid 8.3% walk rate. He was more effective against lefties than righties, as one would expect, but he more than held righties in check during that four-year run. Cecil posted a 3.88 ERA in his first season with the Cardinals, as his strikeout rate dipped a bit, but he remained a strong ground-ball pitcher with a terrific walk rate.

Cecil will retire from baseball with parts of 10 seasons in the Major Leagues, during which time he went 44-47 with a 4.29 ERA, 12 saves and 67 holds in 756 innings. A series of injuries cut short what looked to be a burgeoning run as one of the game’s better left-handed relievers, but two solid seasons as a starting pitcher and a five-year bullpen peak that saw him post a combined 3.14 ERA and fan 29% of his opponents from 2013-17 nevertheless makes for a fine big league career.

Marlins Notes: Avisail, Castellanos, Lopez, Hernandez, Blue Jays

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The Marlins are intent on adding offense, and are exploring both the free agent and trade routes to accomplish this goal.  On the open market, the Marlins have shown interest in Avisail Garcia (as per The Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson) and they have spoken with agent Scott Boras, according to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman.  Boras represents any number of top hitters in this year’s free agent market, though Heyman observes that outfielder Nick Castellanos is from Miami, even if it’s “hard to see [the Marlins] affording him.”

Using MLBTR’s Top 50 Free Agents list as reference, we have Castellanos pegged for a five-year, $115MM deal, not to mention the additional draft pick compensation the Marlins would need to surrender since Castellanos has rejected the Reds’ qualifying offer.  Garcia is projected for three years and $36MM, which much more realistic even for a Marlins team that has expressed a willingness to flex a bit more financial muscle this winter.  As it happens, our Garcia estimate is pretty close to the three-year, $30MM extension offer the Marlins floated at Starling Marte last summer, so that could give some hint as to what the team is prepared to spend.

Garcia is less expensive and is a better defender than Castellanos, though Castellanos has a more consistent track record as a hitter.  Garcia does happen to be coming off one of the best seasons of his career, after hitting .262/.330/.490 with a personal-best 29 homers in 515 PA with the Brewers.  While Garcia alone wouldn’t elevate Miami’s lineup, Heyman believes the Marlins could “acquire multiple hitters that cost somewhat less” than one big splashy acquisition like Castellanos.

The opportunity also exists for the Marlins to trade from their pitching surplus, and MLB Network’s Jon Morosi tweets that the Blue Jays are one of the teams who have been in touch with Miami.  Heyman identifies Pablo Lopez and Elieser Hernandez as the Marlins’ “most available arms,” likely in the context of Lopez and Hernandez being the type of big league-ready pitchers that would appeal to a win-now team like Toronto.

Since the Jays have a catching surplus and the Marlins have a need behind the plate, Alejandro Kirk seems like a logical trade possibility, Morosi opines.  Kirk may have the most trade value of any Blue Jays catcher besides star prospect Gabriel Moreno, and Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith writes that Moreno “appears extremely unlikely” to be dealt anywhere.  Toronto could also be a fit for the Marlins’ outfield needs, as Nicholson-Smith notes that the Jays have been getting a lot of interest in their catchers and outfielders at the GM Meetings.

Joakim Soria Retires

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Right-handed pitcher Joakim Soria is retiring, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, relaying word from Soria’s agent. The 37-year-old pitched for nine different teams over 14 MLB seasons.

Soria made his MLB debut for the Kansas City Royals back in 2007, throwing 69 innings with an ERA of 2.48 and notching 17 saves. He became a mainstay of the Royals’ bullpen through the 2011 campaign. In those five seasons, he pitched 315 1/3 innings with an ERA of 2.40 and racked up 160 saves. He was an All-Star twice, in 2008 and 2010.

That would prove to be the best stretch of Soria’s career, although he continued to be an effective reliever for another decade, pitching for the Rangers, Tigers and Pirates, returning to the Royals, and then stints with White Sox, Brewers and Athletics. In 2021, he started the season with the Diamondbacks and was later traded to the Blue Jays.

Over his entire career, he threw 763 innings with an ERA of 3.11, along with 831 strikeouts and 229 saves. MLBTR congratulates Soria on a fine career and wishes him all the best in his future endeavors.

Verlander Showcase Draws Scouts From 15-20 Teams

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Two-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander, who has pitched just six innings since the conclusion of the 2019 season due to 2020 Tommy John surgery, held a free-agent showcase this week. Representatives from as many as 15 to 20 teams this week, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post, adding that Verlander’s fastball was clocked from 94 to 97 mph. He’s presently about 13 and a half months out from the surgery and will be 17 months removed from the procedure by the time Spring Training is set to begin.

As one would expect, the list of known teams in attendance at the showcase includes a blend of big-market contenders and a few rebuilding clubs looking to turn the corner and get back into competitive ball. Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic tweets that the Yankees, Rangers and Tigers were in attendance. Sherman notes that the Mets had two scouts present for Verlander’s workout. TSN’s Scott Mitchell adds the Blue Jays to the pile, and the Post’s Ken Davidoff lists the Giants as another suitor. Angels GM Perry Minasian told reporters that the Halos had someone present to watch Verlander as well (Twitter link via The Athletic’s Sam Blum).

Of course, given the stage of the offseason we’re at, it’s safe to assume that virtually any team with a modicum of 2022 postseason hope and/or any actual money to spent this offseason was at least present to gauge Verlander’s readiness. As Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom asked rhetorically when confirming his club’s presence at the showcase (link via Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe): “Age might affect the term you consider, but if the present ability is there, why wouldn’t you be interested?”

By all accounts, the showcase went quite well. Beyond the multiple reports pegging Verlander’s velocity in the mid- to upper-90s, Sherman indicates that Verlander was able to throw all of his pitches and looked sharp across the board. Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle tweets that one scout offered a simple, two-word assessment of Verlander after watching his open audition: “He’s ready.”

It’s certainly worth noting that the showcase was held at the Cressey Performance Center — a facility run by Yankees director of health and performance Eric Cressey. Corey Kluber held his own showcase there last year and ultimately signed with the Yankees, but the mere location of Verlander’s workout doesn’t make a deal with the Yankees a foregone conclusion.

The Astros made a one-year, $18.4MM qualifying offer to Verlander over the weekend, but the widespread expectation is that he’ll reject that in search of a multi-year offer. Astros owner Jim Crane said last month that Verlander would likely be looking for a “contract of some length” in free agency, heavily implying at least a two-year term. Furthermore, hosting a showcase for two-thirds of the league is an obvious indicator that Verlander is interested in seeing what the market has to bear.

Verlander, 39 in February, didn’t pitch in 2021 and threw just six innings in 2020. Of course, in his last healthy season, he won the 2019 American League Cy Young Award after posting a 2.58 ERA in an MLB-best 223 innings with a huge 35.4% strikeout rate against a 5.0% walk rate. Verlander has said on multiple occasions in the past that he hopes to pitch well into his 40s.

Orioles Claim Bryan Baker From Blue Jays

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The Orioles announced they’ve claimed reliever Bryan Baker off waivers from the Blue Jays. The 26-year-old made his big league debut in September, tossing a scoreless inning during a win over the A’s.

Baker’s big league outing was the briefest cup of coffee, but he showed a live arm, averaging just shy of 95 MPH on his fastball. Even more appealing is his Triple-A track record, as he earned that late-season look with a stellar year for the Jays’ top affiliate. The righty tossed 41 1/3 innings across 39 appearances with the Bisons, pitching to a 1.31 ERA while striking out a strong 28.9% of batters faced.

The knock on Baker throughout his time in the minors has been spotty control. His 10.2% walk percentage in Triple-A this past season wasn’t much higher than the major league average for relievers, but Baker’s walk totals from 2018-19 were significantly more alarming. The O’s will take a no-cost flier to see if he can sustain this year’s control improvements and settle in as a useful option in a wide open bullpen.

Baker still has a pair of minor league option years remaining, so the front office can freely move him between Baltimore and Triple-A Norfolk for the next couple seasons so long as he sticks on the 40-man roster. The claim brings the Orioles’ 40-man tally up to 32, while the Jays’ roster now sits at 33.

Robert Murray of FanSided reported the move shortly before the team announcement.

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