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The Yankees have nowhere to put Jason Heyward.  The Giants will steal Zack Greinke away from the Dodgers.  The Cardinals would never sign a player like Chris Davis.  The Rangers are going to add a big bat.  Do you have strong opinions like these on MLB’s top free agents?  Then enter into the MLBTR Free Agent Prediction contest and prove your genius!

The closes tonight at 11:59pm central time.  The only requirement is a Facebook account.  The winners will receive cash prizes and, more importantly, bragging rights over MLBTR’s writing team and other contest participants.  Your picks can be saved and edited up until the deadline.  Try it today!

After three straight seasons in which no player accepted a qualifying offer, and a record twenty offers extended this offseason, perhaps something had to give. For the first time, we saw players land in favor of taking the one-year offer — valued this year at $15.8MM — rather than entering the market with the burden of draft pick compensation attached.

We’ve covered the rules in some detail previously. For those players that accepted a qualifying offer, their once-and-current teams may not trade them without consent until June 15, 2016. (That’s the same rule that applies to any other free agent signing.) And no draft compensation changes hands.

That’s the situation for these three players who accepted qualifying offers:

• Brett Anderson, SP (Dodgers)
• Colby Rasmus, OF (Astros)
• Matt Wieters, C (Orioles)

For the seventeen declining players, their former teams will stand to receive a “sandwich” round draft pick as compensation. New teams that sign those players will have to forfeit their top unprotected draft pick (or picks, if they sign multiple QO-rejecting players). If a player rejects a QO but ultimately re-signs with the same team, no draft pick shuffling occurs.

Here’s that list:

• Wei-Yin Chen, SP (Orioles)
• Chris Davis, 1B (Orioles)
• Ian Desmond, SS (Nationals)
• Dexter Fowler, OF (Cubs)
• Yovani Gallardo, SP (Rangers)
• Alex Gordon, OF (Royals)
• Zack Greinke, SP (Dodgers)
• Jason Heyward, OF (Cardinals)
• Hisashi Iwakuma, SP (Mariners)
• Howie Kendrick, 2B (Dodgers)
• Ian Kennedy, SP (Padres)
• John Lackey, SP (Cardinals)
• Daniel Murphy, 2B/3B (Mets)
• Jeff Samardzija, SP (White Sox)
• Justin Upton, OF (Padres)
• Jordan Zimmermann, SP (Nationals)

That only accounts for 19 of the 20 offers, of course. The other player to receive a QO was righty Marco Estrada, who agreed to a multi-year pact with the Blue Jays before being forced to accept or reject the offer. Toronto will neither gain nor lose draft choices.

 

 

Respected journalist Peter King of CBS Radio News has reported on some of the world’s most important news stories. He’s also a hot stove junkie who once followed transactions by way of newspaper and now regularly visits MLBTR.

King joins host Jeff Todd to discuss the roots and growth of his particular blend of fandom, chat about the recent rise of the Mets — the club he’s rooted for all his life and covered in this year’s World Series — and tell us more about his interesting career in broadcast journalism. Listen in here:

Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and please leave a review! The podcast is also available via Stitcher at this link.

The MLB Trade Rumors Podcast runs weekly on Thursday afternoons.

Our top 50 free agents list with team and contract predictions came out on Friday.  Today, I chatted with MLBTR readers about all things related to players on that list.  Click here to read the transcript.

MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes joins host Jeff Todd to discuss the site’s annual top 50 free agent predictions. Listen in to learn more about how and why the list is compiled, along with a breakdown of some of the most interesting and hardest-to-call free agents on this year’s market.

Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and please leave a review! The podcast is also available via Stitcher at this link.

The MLB Trade Rumors Podcast runs weekly on Thursday afternoons.

The NFL trade deadline is today at 3pm CT and ProFootballRumors.com (@pfrumors on Twitter) is your one-stop shop for every rumor and breaking deal.

On Monday, the Broncos made a splash when they acquired two-time Pro Bowler Vernon Davis from the 49ers.  Today, there are several big names who could potentially come up in discussions, including Chargers safety Eric Weddle and 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin.  Contenders like the Cardinals might start working the phones and Broncos GM John Elway says that he’s not necessarily done dealing, either.

Will your favorite team make a move before the buzzer?  Stay tuned to ProFootballRumors.com and follow us on Twitter @pfrumors to find out!

After catching up on moves around the league, Jeff welcomes MLBTR’s Steve Adams to the show to discuss his philosophy on liberally extending qualifying offers. The discussion then moves into this year’s market, covering a host of possible QO recipients — including players such as Marco Estrada (Blue Jays), Daniel Murphy (Mets), Denard Span (Nationals), David Freese (Angels), Matt Wieters (Orioles), Ian Kennedy (Padres), and Colby Rasmus (Astros).

If you’re in need of a refresher on how the qualifying offer process works, and why it’s so important, check out this post from yesterday for a primer.

Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and please leave a review! The podcast is also available via Stitcher at this link.

The MLB Trade Rumors Podcast runs weekly on Thursday afternoons.

MLBTR is seeking people to test out our Android app, Trade Rumors.  This free app has been available in the Play Store for a year now, but our upcoming release adds the ability to read and leave comments on the posts.  We’re looking for people specifically to test the commenting feature.  Also, it might be best if you’ve already been using the app for a while.

If you’d like to help out and test the new commenting feature within the app, please email us at mlbtrandroid@gmail.com.

It’s time to give the free MLBTR email Newsletter a try! We’ll deliver an exclusive article to your inbox every week – no strings attached! I’ll be weighing in on deals, rumors, and all the hot stove-related topics MLBTR has been known for since I launched the site a decade ago. These articles will be exclusive to MLBTR Newsletter subscribers and will not appear on the website. I may also provide occasional updates on what’s next for MLBTR. It’s completely free.

I’ll be honored if you give us your email address and join the thousands of MLBTR readers already enjoying the Newsletter. We will never sell your email address or market anything to the mailing list, and you can unsubscribe easily. My newest post, coming this afternoon, compares and contrasts free agent starters Jeff Samardzija, Wei-Yin Chen, and Mike Leake. Sign up now! Those of you viewing this post in our app can use this link.

Back to the Future Day finally arrives tomorrow, and as big fans of the trilogy here at MLBTR we’ve got a special treat for this week’s podcast.  Host Jeff Todd spoke with Back to the Future screenwriter and longtime Cardinals fan Bob Gale, who discussed why Doc Brown is a baseball fan, the ballplayer inscribed on Griff’s bat, his 1989 prediction of the Cubs topping Miami in the 2015 World Series, and much more.

Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and please leave a review!  Those using our app can go here to listen.

The MLB Trade Rumors Podcast runs weekly.