Today is an important deadline in the MLB offseason as the pool of available free agents takes shape. By 4 p. m.
EST, the 13 players issued qualifying offers will have to accept or reject them. The qualifying offer is a one-year deal for the average of the highest 125 salaries during the previous season. This year, that amount is $21.
05 million. To be eligible for a qualifying offer, the player must have been on one team’s roster for the entire 2024 season and must not have been given a qualifying offer before. Players tagged with this offer can accept it and play out the year under that contract with their previous team, potentially negotiating an extension along the way.
Those players can also reject the offer and become a free agent. If they sign with a new club, that team will lose draft picks and possibly international bonus pool allotments depending on where they stand with respect to the competitive balance tax. Most players given a qualifying offer expect to sign contracts in free agency of greater length and value than a one-year, $21.
05 million deal. In that case, it’s an easy call to decline it. Some of them have a more difficult decision though.
For 10 of the 13 players, declining the qualifying offer was a no-brainer: Willy Adames, Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Corbin Burnes, Teoscar Hernandez, Max Fried, Sean Manaea, Anthony Santander, Juan Soto, and Christian Walker. All of them are expected to sign long-term deals in free agency. MLB Trade Rumors ranked all 10 in the top 13 on their list of the best 50 free agents.
The least lucrative contracts they project for any of them are three-year, $60 million deals for Hernandez, Manaea, and Walker. The other three qualifying offer recipients are pitchers Nick Martinez, Nick Pivetta, and Luis Severino, who all had tougher choices to make. It appears likely that Martinez will be the only one to accept it while the others will test free agency.
Martinez is a veteran swingman who turned 34 in August and is coming off the best season of his career. He pitched in 42 games with 16 starts, setting new career bests with 142 1/3 innings pitched and a 3. 10 ERA.
He reduced his walk rate from 8. 7% in 2023 to 3. 2% last year.
MLB Trade Rumors ranked him their 29th-best free agent and penciled him in for a three-year, $39 million contract before he accepted the offer. While this may have been his last chance to negotiate a multiyear deal considering his age, he will receive a higher salary in 2025 than he probably otherwise would have earned. Pivetta and Severino are both younger than Martinez with longer track records as starting pitchers, but they may have trouble finding contracts surpassing the qualifying offers they declined.
Pivetta, who turns 32 next year, started 26 games and struck out 172 batters in 145 2/3 innings with only 165 baserunners allowed. However, he gave up 28 home runs, and his inability to prevent hard contact has been a recurring theme during his eight-year career. Severino will be 31 on Opening Day and enjoyed a resurgent campaign in 2024, posting a 3.
91 ERA over 31 starts and 182 innings. It was his first time staying healthy over a full season since 2018 though, and his 166 hits allowed with only 161 strikeouts indicates that his pitches don’t induce enough whiffs anymore. When borderline qualifying offer candidates turn it down and become tied to draft-pick compensation, they can sometimes remain unsigned into spring training or even the regular season.
That’s a real risk for Pivetta and Severino, whereas Martinez’s free agency has now been delayed by another year. This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
