The Qualifying Offer number for this offseason 💜will be around $21.2 million, , nearly a $1 million increase from last year♈.
The Cubs do not have anyone who’ll be departing and justify making a Qualifying Offer (Cody Bellinger, even if he opts out, has already received his one career Qualifying Offer), so we don’t need to think about this information from that perspective.
Instead, the interest here is more general to the free agent market, and which prospective free agents will or will not be made offers, and which will or will not consider accepting them.👍
Recall, the Qualifying Offer number is the one-season price tag that a team can offer to an outgoing free agent to stick around for one more year. If the player rejects the Qualifying Offer, then two ൩things happen: (1) the team that loses him will get some draft pick compensation when he signs elsewhere, and (2) the team signing him will have to give up some draft pick/IFA costs in order to sign him.
As : “This winter, players like Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes, Alex Bregman, Willy Adames, Pete Alonso, Max Fried and Anthony Santander are virtual locks to receive and reject a QO as long as they are healthy. Players like Ha-Seong Kim, Gleyber Torres, Teoscar Hernández, Christian Walker, Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and Jurickson Profar will be tougher calls for their respective clubs.” (I tend to think Ha-Seong Kim is going to get and reject one, but would agree that the others, for varying reasons, could be slightly tougher calls.)
