Don’t Freak Out, but Four Guys Accepted the Qualifying Offer
After Josh Naylor signed the first major free agent deal of the offseason over the weekend, four more big names came off the board Tuesday afternoon. Of the 13 free agents who were presented with qualifying offers, four accepted: Brandon Woodruff, Trent Grisham, Gleyber Torres, and Shota Imanaga will all return to their previous teams on one-year contracts worth $22.025 million.
Bo Bichette, Dylan Cease, Edwin Díaz, Framber Valdez, Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Tucker, Michael King, Ranger Suárez, and Zac Gallen all declined their qualifying offers and will hit the open market, carrying draft pick penalties to be determined by MLB’s inscrutable compensation system.
If you’re thinking this is a bumper crop of QO acceptance, you’d be right. In the first 14 years of the qualifying offer system, 144 offers were extended to pending free agents, and only 14 accepted. This year, nearly one in four qualified free agents decided to bank the offer and walk away, rather than face one more multiple-choice question from Regis Philbin.
Having four players accept the qualifying offer is unprecedented; the previous record, three, was set in 2015 and never matched until now. Given that we’re heading into the last year of the collective bargaining agreement — and, by all indications, toward a lockout next winter — there’s an obvious temptation to read this as a bellwether for the labor market this winter, and for the tenor of next year’s negotiations.
Personally, I would be circumspect about drawing conclusions from the qualifying offer market. Taking the $22 million and change that comes with a qualifying offer might indicate what these players (and/or their agents) think about the robustness of this winter’s free agent market, but if they were so sure we were headed for a 2004-05 NHL lockout-type event, I don’t know why they’d be taking the risk of a one-year deal.
I don’t want to discount the larger market forces entirely, but the most obvious explanation for these four players taking the qualifying offer is that each of them has reason to doubt whether a richer long-term deal is coming down the pipeline. I’ll deal with each briefly.
Woodruff is the most obvious case. The Brewers’ longtime ace was already non-tendered after the 2023 season, when he blew out his shoulder. Woodruff re-signed on a two-year, $17.5 million deal with a $20 million mutual option for 2026; this would allow him to complete the multi-year rehab process on the club’s dime, while giving Milwaukee first dibs on the former Mississippi State star once he returned to fitness.
Woodruff finally got back into the rotation in July, and he was dynamite. In 12 starts, he posted a 3.20 ERA, a 3.17 FIP, and career bests in both strikeout rate and walk rate. But he suffered a lat strain in mid-September that cost him a chance to play in the postseason (leaving Milwaukee with a rotation of Freddy Peralta, followed by as many Aaron Ashby opener games as it took for Peralta to recharge). Even before that, Woodruff’s fastball was down two and a half ticks from where it was in 2023, and three miles an hour from where it was in 2022, his last fully healthy season.
Woodruff turns 33 in February; he’s three years and two significant injuries removed from his most recent 100-inning season. I doubt anyone was going to fork over the kind of money Woodruff could reasonably command if he had a stronger track record of health. At the same time, he’s already got a $10 million option buyout in the bank. Why not take another $22 million to stay with the only organization he’s ever known, which just so happened to have the best record in the National League last year? If it works out, he’ll go back on the market with a clean bill of health and no draft picks attached.
The other pitcher on the list, Imanaga, has had to navigate a contractual labyrinth of his own. I was stunned when the Cubs turned down Imanaga’s three-year, $57 million team option a few weeks ago. The left-hander had had his share of issues with the home run over his brief MLB career, especially in 2025. But he never walks anyone, and healthy left-handed arms aren’t exactly springing up from the very living earth these days. (Imanaga spent eight weeks on the IL with a hamstring issue, but I said “arm” just now for a reason.) The Cubs could’ve had that for three years at a $19 million AAV. Which sounds like a lot, but the Tigers — not the Dodgers or Mets, a team for which money is real — just paid Alex Cobb $15 million not to pitch at all. The open market is treacherous, friends.
Imanaga then turned down his own $15 million player option for 2026, at which point the Cubs tagged him with the qualifying offer. That further reduced Imanaga’s free agent leverage while essentially increasing the value of his player option by half.
I really was gobsmacked that the Cubs would risk letting a good starting pitcher go like that, but now that the whole situation has played out, it seems like the Cubs have shot the moon here.
I like Imanaga. I think the Cubs need him, and at $20 million or thereabouts, he’s a bargain. At the same time, I understand why they might have concerns about committing to him for several years. By turning down the option and qualifying Imanaga, they gave him more up front — about $2 million more this season in real money and about $3 million against the competitive balance tax — but they avoid committing to him through his age-34 season.
At the same time, Imanaga’s posting fee includes an escalator clause, standard among deals like this, that obliges Chicago to pay 15% of all exercised options and bonuses on top of the original posting fee. (Thanks to the immensely learned Jon Becker for his help tracking this down.) Let’s do the math real quick: 15% of $57 million is $8.55 million. Even if the QO counted toward the posting fee, which I don’t think it does, the Cubs would save about $5.25 million in posting fees.
So Imanaga gets more money up front — a lot more than he’d be entitled to under his player option — and if he was ticked off about losing the two team option years, he’s not too ticked off to take the qualifying offer. The Yokohama DeNA BayStars are definitely getting screwed, but what are they going to do about it?
And the only way the Cubs come out of this looking foolish is if Imanaga goes out and has a monster 2026 season. Like, contends for the Cy Young Award and walks into $35 million a year on his next deal when the Cubs could’ve had him for $19 million. And even then, I feel like the Cubs would be OK with that, because a world in which Imanaga pitches that well is probably one in which the Cubs win a lot of games.
As for the position players, I wrote up Grisham for our Top 50 Free Agents list, and wasn’t sure what to make of him. Because he was really good for the Yankees in 2025, and he accomplished this by being a completely different player than he was early in his career. A speed-and-defense guy for years, Grisham hit 34 home runs and was barely passable in center.
All of our contract predictions for Grisham came in somewhere around three years and $54 million, which is the neighborhood of contract where the QO makes a difference. You’re already outbidding the market for a guy with some serious questions; do you want to lose two high draft picks and $1 million in international bonus pool money too?
Discretion is probably the better part of valor here for Grisham. He can continue to play for a winning team, in a park that could not be a better fit for his swing, and score a million runs hitting in front of Aaron Judge. And as one of the younger players in this free agent class, Grisham can afford to take a do-over. If he does all this again next year, he’ll make that $18 million AAV look like peanuts, especially if the Gold Glove-quality center field defense comes back. If not, well, there was serious downside possibility for a player like this in what might be a bear market.
Torres has a lot in common with Grisham; he had a good year in close-to-ideal circumstances, but while his offensive skills are extensive, the overall profile doesn’t play as well in a corner outfield spot as it would up the middle. And with every one-year deal Torres takes — remember, he got skunked in 2024-25 and settled for a $15 million prove-it deal with the Tigers — the day of defensive reckoning comes closer.
I think there’s less upside to Torres taking the qualifying offer than the other three — I don’t see him putting together a 2026 season that’d bring in a nine-figure contract unless something truly wild happens — but he hit the market with no strings attached last season and didn’t do this well.
So while it’s unusual for anyone to accept a qualifying offer, and unprecedented for four players to do it on the same day, I get it. Every one of them has a reason to take $22 million now, rather than risk it on the open market, especially given the upcoming labor uncertainty. And double-especially, considering that each of them had been saddled with the millstone of draft pick and international bonus pool compensation.
More than that, I think it’s a product of teams being a little looser with the QO. It’s not just a formality for stars, it’s a legitimate market-rate offer for players who are either merely above average or have a history of injury. If you’re going to sign a one-year prove-it deal anyway, why waste the whole offseason waiting for it to come?
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
Not surprised these players accepted the offer because it undercuts their market significantly. For players like the ones that accepted it it’s almost like giving the clubs an additional year of control at a fixed price.
I’m split on Zac Gallen’s market it will depend on how much a front office talks themselves into him. His season obviously was disappointing but he’s been trending down for sometime but he eats innings. I think the QO will really damage his market and he probably should have accepted it. Maybe I’m wrong and he gets a three year deal but with a QO attached I have a hard time seeing it and he might be in for a long free agency.
The way the offer works needs to change and the offer should stand until the start of camp that would make teams less likely to extend them and protect the players if their market doesn’t develop. I doubt the owners would ever agree to it but seeing some guys tagged with it going unsigned until late is not a great look for anyone.
The owners would never agree it to it because it would carry the risk that they’d suddenly have to raise their payroll a bunch if somebody waited until the last minute to accept it, and front offices would hate it because they’d feel like it was impossible to fill the spot the player vacated with somebody else until after the player signed or accepted the offer, and because the really payroll-conscious (read: cheap) owners would just not let them spend money until they knew it wouldn’t go to a late QO acceptance.
Maybe a way around it would be to turn it into some sort of mutual option after the QO deadline, where if the player’s market never develops they can still claim the offer, then if the team no longer has the money or roster space for him in January (or whenever the offer is accepted) they can rescind it and not have to unexpectedly take him back that late, but also the draft pick/bonus pool money compensation disappears and anyone can now sign the player without giving anything to his previous team? Just a thought.
I agree maybe have the winter meetings be the deadline but even then no owner would want to accept suddenly have one fairly large salary suddenly drop onto their books.
What makes no sense to me is that free agency has already started by the time players have to make a decision on whether to reject or accept.
This means that agents should be able to talk to teams, and should be able to tell their player whether they can still get a nice long term contract. And I believe that they typically do.
When a player does not get a good offer after turning down a QO it probably means one of two things:
-The agent thinks that teams are not showing interest but that they will come around once the offseason drags on, or
-The agent lays out the scenario and the player decides to bet on himself anyway
For what it’s worth, Boras is Gallen’s agent. So I am guessing it is probably the first one. He represents a bunch of free agent starters right now and he probably thinks that with the interest in Cease and Ranger Suarez that teams will pivot to Gallen if they miss out on them. And I just don’t think that will happen!
True, but at this point I think the players know Boras’s approach, so if you’re sticking with him you’re the kind of player who bets on himself.
As a Padres fan, really hoping King might accept his QO, though knew this was very unlikely. Hoping the logic would be the QO probably close-ish to the AAV of his new deal and he could use 2026 to dispel any injury risk that might dampen his market value.
Ya I thought he would. He doesn’t seem much different from Woodruff
He must have multi year offer’s
King’s got a couple of years (in age) on Woodruff, and I really think that makes the difference. As a POBO, I’m a lot more willing to take the draft pick hit if I can get 2-4 peak seasons instead of what appears to be the (gentle) decline phase of Woodruff’s career.
Maybe. But with a pitcher injuries often get them before Father Time
“ He doesn’t seem much different from Woodruff”
Other than like a healthy arm and body that still generates more or less the same stuff it has for years? I’m always a little weirded out by how immaterial fans and media tend to treat injuries in certain context (usually one where a much more obviously healthy player may make some money esp in FA, where past performance is both at a premium and dismissible depending on which is cheaper for teams)
Eovaldi got 3/$75 last offseason, with a checkered health history and more gray hair. King will do just fine for himself.
Geez, true
I predicted four would. Not exactly these four. I’ve been saying for a few years that it doesn’t make logical sense for so few to be accepted. Teams have been too conservative. Other than maybe Torres, none of these players are a bad contract anyway, and the benefit if they decline can be huge depending on the rest of your draft capital.
I think it is hilarious that Cashman and Yankees are stuck paying Grisham $22 million when there so many better ways to waste that money. Not that they can’t afford it of course, just that he has so much more downside than upside risk.
I think it’s fine. I’m not thrilled at the $22M price tag, because of the downside risk, but if he turns back into a pumpkin, it’s a one year deal, and it shouldn’t prevent the Yanks from making moves. The Yanks can always use more draft capital, so I see why you’d make the offer.
It’s literally a one year deal, I have no idea why everyone is so mad. Maybe if they do nothing be mad in February.
bad analysis. CF is a very weak and shallow position around MLB, and Grisham’s probably top 10 at the position. There’s nothing in the data to suggest that the improvements in his offensive approach were illusory. Getting him on a one-year deal coming off of the season he had is inherently less downside risk for the team than the multiyear deal he might have gotten had he turned it down.
Yeah, the Yanks would have been in a hard spot at CF otherwise. The options would be to play judge there, throw Spencer Jones to the wolves, re-sign Bellinger for a lot more money, or sign some lower level guy like Bader or Mullins. I’m fine with one relatively expensive year of Grisham given the options.
My read is that they still have hope for Jones but don’t think he’s put it all together yet and don’t want to rush him. This buys him an extra year to get to acceptably bad z-con% while maintaining the damage on contact gains he’s made. On the other hand, I kind of think they’re done with Dominguez and sign Bellinger to play LF while trading him. Watch me be dead wrong though and they trade Jones and keep Dominguez in LF full-time.
Why not Dominguez in center? He seems better suited there. Maybe at this point, the Yankees just trade him since they don’t seem to want to give him a full-time job.
What about Dominguez suggests he’d be better in center than left? He’s seen over 1400 professional innings in left now, it’s far more likely that he’s just a bad outfielder than an acceptable center fielder who cannot figure out left for whatever reason.
Yeah I recall the arguments that Profar’s data suggested he was for real too
The debacle that is CF makes this a risk worth taking (and the downside of him maybe not really being a CF is mitigated by it just being 1 year) but I do not buy that a player is his career year season going forward regardless of what the underlyings say
Of course…Profar hit really well this year.
The only way the Imanaga thing could have played out more amusingly is if he had rejected the QO, but then resigned with the Cubs anyway.
I’m most surprised that Gallen declined. He had the 8th worst ERA of all qualified starters last year. He basically had 2 really good years (’22/’23 he averaged 26.4%/6.1%/3.04 K/BB/ERA) vs last year’s 23.1%/8.4%/4.83. Last year he had a career high barrel rate and lowest SwStr% since ’21. Everything is moving in the wrong direction. What is the redeeming quality here?
Why would a signing team take the QO draft pick/int’l $ penalty for this profile? I’d much rather save some money and sign any of Bassitt, Kelly, Mahle, or Littell who are all projected to get less money on two year deals.
I am convinced this is a mistake on Gallen’s part. He was excellent a couple years ago but his peripherals and stuff are down to the point that he shouldn’t really be a priority for any team.
Without a QO he would be in line for a Lucas Giolito-type deal, two years for $40M with an opt out. With the QO I can’t imagine a team willing to guarantee him the $22M he just turned down. At least not without spreading it out over a couple years.
But I am also convinced his agent has already checked in with teams and gotten a sense of their interest. You would think that a player wouldn’t turn down the QO if they knew nobody else was interested but we still see things like that happening. But it still happens!
So now I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m leaning towards a Nick Pivetta type situation but I don’t understand why he would turn it down.
The insanity of today’s pitching market is impossible to understand. The Red Sox signed Sandival for $18.25M hoping to get one year out of a guy who is of doubtful value even when healthy. The Mets gave Frankie Montas $34M for -0.6 bWAR then threw him to the fishes after his arm fell off. The deal was a joke when it was first announced because he had either been injured or worthless in 2022-2024. The Tigers got zero innings for their $15M investment in Alex Cobb for 2025. With that background I am certain Gallen, who has been at least able to climb the bump throughout his career, will walk away with a multi-year deal.
Yeah I was pretty surprised that I hadn’t seen his case discussed in much detail anywhere, I was sure he’d accept
My god the way fellow Yankee fans are reacting to Grisham is so talk radio, I swear.
Like, let’s just see what happens.
If you’re on NY sports talk radio for patience and reason, you’re doing it wrong
I think they must believe that Grisham accepting means that they’re going to let Bellinger walk. Which may or may not be true, I have no idea how short-sighted the Yankees’ front office is about this.
Bellinger walking would definitely not be a great outcome for them. But the worst case scenario is losing both of them and watching Spencer Jones strike out in half of his PAs next year. And the best case scenario is having both back. So I fail to see how Grisham drawing a big salary for one year is a problem for a team that prints money like the Yankees.
Right, Grisham is good insurance. I have no idea though why they would rather play Spencer Jones over Jasson Dominguez, but it seems like they really prefer Jones. The Yankees could use an upgrade at 3rd in my mind over anything else, assuming that Volpe bounces back on defense.
I think they have made their choice at third base, and it was a weird choice, but I think they’re going to give it a year to see if McMahon improves.
I don’t have a lot of faith in Spencer Jones, so I guess I would think that if they lose Bellinger the play is to run Dominguez back out there and hope he either hits or fields better. But Dominguez himself probably only has one more year before they move on. It’s not at all obvious that he’s going to play better than Mullins or Hays or Jesus Sanchez or Max Kepler next year (or Yastrzemski or Bader, for that matter) and guys like that are not super hard to find.
I’d take the 22 year old switch hitter whose wRC+ cracked 100 over the 30-somethings with sub-100 wRC+s, personally.
Since turning 16, Dominguez has spent 3100 total innings in the OF – I expect his reads to improve with experience, even if he doesn’t do it in NY.
Anecdotally, I played RF growing up and play CF in softball – I can’t the ball at all when I play LF.
They’ve also openly said that they’ll still be in on Bellinger if Grisham signs the QO.
Tucker was never walking through that door, because Hal Steinbrenner owns the Yankees.
If they’re going to spend a lot of money on someone other than Bellinger the guys I would expect them to be in on are pitchers. Especially relievers.
Kyle Tucker would be nice for almost any team but a Bellinger / Grisham / Judge outfield for a combined 1900 PAs or whatever it will be does not leave a ton of room for Tucker. And would still be really good!
Pretty sure the Yanks are perfectly happy. They only have so much time to maximize around Judge and the CF pool is a puddle this year they get one low risk though fairly expensive year with Grisham.
At this point NY sports talk radio is a parody of itself. They put on people with outrageous takes who come up with these takes to get on the radio.
But I willingly suspend my disbelief for the sake of entertainment!
Reality TV for men!
Interesting to see how the meta of qualifying offers have changed over the years.
In 2023-24, teams only offered them to the top-level free agents who would obviously decline, and they all did.
In 2024-25, we saw a lot of mid-level guys (Martinez, Severino, Manaea, Pivetta) get qualifying offers, but a lot more of them rejected it than I expected. Their markets were obviously hurt – we didn’t hear a peep about Pivetta until February, and I was genuinely scared he wouldn’t sign until after the Draft in July – but pretty much all of them signed decent deals and netted their teams compensation picks.
This offseason, teams probably looked at last year and gave more mid-level guys QOs, but then the players responded differently and accepted a lot more of them. Even though Pivetta and Severino did go on to sign decent contracts, you definitely have to wonder if it would’ve been better for them to bank the $21M and then go into FA with no compensation attached. It almost certainly would’ve in Pivetta’s case.
It’s strange that we’ve seen so much variance in how teams give the QO when, in theory, it should be the easiest decision in the world. If you think the guy is worth more than the qualifying offer, giving it to him is a win no matter what he does: either you get him back for less than his market value, or you get a draft pick if he leaves.
I think you could take the market forces point a step further even: four guys taking QO’s, almost all of which it made total sense for, could indicate they’re less worried about struggling to get deals next offseason. After all, there was a bit of a free agent bonanza after the 2021 season when both players and teams seemed motivated to lock down what they could before the lockout.
I’ve always been surprised that more FAs in this tier don’t accept the QO, as the market for these midrange players is deeply affected by it. Yes, there are risks, but it doesn’t take that much for a player to improve on $55M/3 when they start with $22M/1 and won’t come attached to $10M in lost value next season.
Longer contracts aren’t inherently better for the player – they just tend to work that way, because teams prefer to spread the expense over more years than a player’s expected prime. Even Soto should have and probably would have preferred a one year contract if it was for $200M.
Also – why would the 2027 lockout incentivize players towards signing longer term deals? Existing contracts aren’t paid during a work stoppage, are they? I don’t think they are, and then any lost games would get prorated, so the difference would just be whether you think there will be more or less money available in the market under the new deal. I think the balance of probability is that conditions would be more player-favorable when the dust settles. Maybe that’s not crystal clear, but I certainly don’t see why we should expect the reverse.
I actually really like this deal for the Tigers. I don’t think the Tigers would’ve pursued Gleyber in free agency, so this forces a key member of the team back into the lineup. Gleyber was great in the first half and the catalyst for the offense when the Tigers were on their way to the best record in baseball. Everything started to go south when he got hurt around the all-star break (there were other factors, but Gleyber was a big one). There’s a clear explanation for why he fell off in the second half (sports hernia), and all indications are that he’ll be healthy by spring training.
It also gives McGonigle time to develop (or they push him to 3B if he’s ready immediately, which he was doing in the AFL).
Woodruff accepting surprises me.
He looked great on his return.
Turning 33, he’s got one multiyear deal left in him.
Given how starved teams are for pitching, somebody would have given him something between 4/80 and 5/120. It only takes one.
If he has a bad year this year, that’s toast.
If he has a good year, he’ll be turning 34 anyway and 4-5 years will be incrementally harder to come by.
Nobody was going to give him 4/80 or 5/120. I think he made the right decision. He is kinda old, often injured and is throwing 3mph slower than before. How many teams want to risk a 60M+ multiyear deal to guy like this and also lost a draft pick?
He is a good value on a 1-2 year deal but too risky for a big long contract.
He may have been throwing with less velocity but he was still getting hitters out and the reality is that the numbers were simply great. Top of the rotation pitchers are more than just a robotic machine. They have an inner something that enables them to continue to perform at the major league level even as age sneaks up on them.
A large deal was not out there for him. The story changes if his results are similar to this year but it really seemed like smoke and mirrors.
I agree that he did the correct thing by accepting the QO. There wasn’t going to be a multi-year deal out there but I have been getting undeniable vibes that the industry thinks he is washed up, ala Carlos Carrasco. Injuries aside, he hasn’t yet shown that he can’t get hitters out at a high level. The Brewers must think that as well or there wouldn’t have been a QO waiting for him.
I agree with this generalization, but then Woody suffered another shoulder-adjacent injury. $22M is an overpay if he doesn’t exceed 100 innings.
I think the challenge with Woodruff’s market is that while he pitched well last year, it was still only 64 innings, and he got hurt again. I think he’ll be a good pitcher when he pitches for the next couple of years, but the injury risk is huge. And if the stuff gets even worse, maybe he’s no longer a good pitcher.
I’m not as surprised about him accepting it as I was about the Brewers extending it.
For Woodruff’s part, between the buyout he triggered and the QO Milwaukee tendered, he’s pocketing $32M on a 1-year deal. You’re certainly correct it only takes one suitor, but I’m not sure which team would’ve been keen to surrender a draft pick and roll the dice on such a commitment? (I figured the Angels, since that’s the kind of thing they do.) As a Brewers fan I wonder if it means he’s skeptical of his own ability to continue performing at a high level; probably unfair on my part, but I trend toward cynicism generally in all things.
As far as the Brewers’ end of things, I must confess I’m a bit perplexed by the whole thing. I default to assuming Matt Arnold is going to be right because he usually is, but committing $22M to an injured Woodruff so they can presumably cash in Freddy Peralta this winter doesn’t seem to make much sense in the short term. Even if they’re compelled to move Peralta anyway, there’s a surplus of serviceable cheap arms stuck in Nashville as is. Why not reallocate that money into a corner infielder? Woodruff seems no less a risk to bank on as your ace next year than Misiorowski, for entirely different reasons of course.
I’m glad to keep watching him, and it might very well turn out to be a great move, but I’m feeling skeptical for the time being.
Because it’s a one-year commitment before their contention window closes?
I mean, I’m not certain that’s accurate (or even their thinking) but it’s at least a rational hypothesis.
Also would expect MIL to be one of the teams most averse to signing multi-year deals ahead of a near-certain work stoppage (I think there is an intransigent “hardline” ownership faction that is 100% on board for breaking the union).
I expect you’re correct. No bad thing as a one year deal, in a vacuum at least; I might rather have seen that money used on a similar 1-year commitment to someone who can hit the ball to the warning track. Though that could still happen.
At the risk of sounding like their PR rep — I’ve spent many years digesting Rays-isms ever since this FO rolled in — Arnold (and the ownership) take the public position that they don’t believe in “windows” and that the intent is to keep replenishing assets at a rate that allows them to field a winning team every year; if you ask these guys if they’d trade a bad decade for a championship, they’d definitely say no. I still can’t decide if I like that or not, but having already watched several decades of terrible Brewers teams, I’ll endure the status quo.
I’m going to give the Brewers a ton of credit here. The $10M buyout was a sunk cost, so good on them for deciding he’s worth the extra $22M while they contend.
It was a good move. I didn’t think they would do it, but they did and they are in a better spot for it.
The Brewers don’t have many options for high-end starters and Woodruff was one of them. I don’t think they could go out and spend $22M to just get a pitcher with Woodruff’s upside.
Moving Peralta would undo all of that but it’s entirely possible he could net a big return, or that he won’t be traded at all. It’s nice for them to have the option to pursue it.
In terms of free agency, I just don’t think that corner infielder is available. Eugenio Suarez is great but he is probably the only one who would fit and if you miss out on him it’s over. The other corner infielders that would be obvious upgrades (Bregman, Alonso) are going to be way more than Woodruff’s salary.
I do think the Brewers could do more. They could really use an upgrade on Jake Bauers, even someone like Luke Raley or maybe Trevor Larnach if they think they could teach him to play defense (seems like a stretch). And finding a utility player who could credibly spell Durbin would be nice, someone like Josh Smith (who probably isn’t available). But none of those are guaranteed.
Exactly. Brewers have some money to spend, but not that much and they have solid players almost everywhere. Average FA players are not better than what they already have but they cant give 250M to stars. Woodruff was one of few exception – high upside player on a deal they can afford.
Yeah the only downside is that his shoulder might fall off and he will contribute nothing. But you don’t get a guy who was on pace for a 5 win season over 180 innings *with diminished stuff* on a one year deal without some huge risk. I just think it is a risk worth taking.
I’m always amazed when I’m reminded that Gleyber hit 38 HRs as a 22 year old middle infielder.
2019 was wild.
And like 34 of them were in Baltimore
2019 Torres: 125 wRC+
2019 Torres (Orioles removed): 101 wRC+
That’s nuts. I had no idea he did that damage against one team.
The Orioles literally renovated the stadium so he could never do that to them again.
And Yankees fans never forgave him for it – he was every bit as good in 2023, just didn’t hit bombs.
For the most part, it’s not too surprising that these players accepted. Woodruff’s age and injury history make giving him a multiyear deal dicey. Imanaga by many measures was pretty bad this year. Gleyber’s defense is a problem to the point that if he slips much more he would have to be moved off 2B, but there is nowhere else he profiles well. But I did not expect Grisham. He’s been quite good since the moment the Yankees gave him regular playing time last year. He compares well to a few players that declined the QO a year ago. I read this as a very strong statement that he’s going into 2026 motivated and confident.
I’m not too surprised by Grisham accepting the QO.
From 2022-24 he had been a below average hitter, and his defense is on a steady decline throughout the last 4 seasons. There is no way he can make $22M AAV on the open market, QO attached or not. His track record is not that great, and right now steamer/FGDC project 2-2.5 WAR. We have to wait and see what number ZiPS gives him, but I’d imagine it’s within that range there too, and that might make the QO a bit of an overpay. Also, despite being a left handed bat who pulls flyballs, he hit better on the road.
That said, if he maintains his offensive output next year then he’s able to sway some more teams into thinking maybe he’s for real, and then gets that multi-year contract.
I agree that he wouldn’t have gotten the same AAV, but he could have gotten a multi-year deal for over $50M. Pivetta, Manaea, Santander, and Severino all declined the QO last year and got deals like that – and for the most part well over 50. Manaea and Severino especially went into FA with only the one good platform season, after multiple poor years.
So, yeah, recent history tells us that the market probably would have been there. Teams wouldn’t have been scared off by him hitting better performance on the road, because that just proves he wasn’t purely a product of Yankee Stadium. What might make them jittery is the unknown effects of a possible lockout in a year. The fact that he’s betting on himself in that market makes him seem all the more confident to me.
Gleyber’s 2B defense is firmly ensconced as tolerable, at this point.
He bounced back this year, haha!
I’m a Jays fan and I know quite a few people who became casual fans of the team during the final quarter of this past season and their playoff run. It’s amusing how many times I’ve had to explain that Bo Bichette turning down the qualifying offer is essentially a formality and does *not* mean he’s definitely signing with another team. I can see how a person who became a fan five months ago would see that headline and think ‘wtf?!?’
2015/2016 all over again…everyone is a Jays expert all of a sudden but can’t name the backup catcher, have no idea who Carlos Delgado is…
It was the same thing in 2019 with the Raptors. Toronto can really be a bandwagon town at times.
How are the Argos looking?
I agree 100% but I will hand Toronto this: It is a bandwagon town but they stay on it for a few years afterwards. People I know still cared about the Raptors even though they were mediocre, up until they fired Nick Nurse (at that point I think they checked out again).
“Personally, I would be circumspect about drawing conclusions from the qualifying offer market.”
Allow me to circumnavigate your circumspect posture and state the obvious using more forthright diction:
We’re completely screwed after this year.
Just an indicator that the owners, our masters, dear friends, and givers of life via jobs and wages, have done what they wanted to do to FA. There’s room for moar too thanks to a sycophantic, kept population that repeats their masters’ refrain of demanding more for less or you’re entitled, lazy, and much weaker than the boomer consumer. Workers’ earning potential is shot, its an open secret, and sperts fans ‘Mericans will still demand every single penny be converted to high performance so that they feel they and their masters get proper Value….The good news is this is all going to collapse inevitably and hopefully sooner than our masters and their familiars imagine
I find it somewhat amusing that people generally rate the NYY paying Grisham 22nm for 1 year a negative but the Mariners paying Naylor 5 for 92mm as a positive.
Grisham is a few months older but one could easily argue that Naylor’s weight is the bigger aging issue.
Grisham also had the better career to date, the better 2025, and is signed to a shorter commitment. What am I missing? Feels like people are still in the afterglow of Naylor having a couple big hits in a playoff run?
Naylor’s been trending upwards since 2022 while Grisham has been trending downward.
Perhaps in a minor way, but the trends for both still point to both likely having around a 3 WAR ceiling. I guess I’d rather commit only 22mm to that type of profile instead of 92.
The people complaining about the Grisham deal are silly…but “proved he can hit in Seattle” is a unique differentiator, here.
I don’t see any daylight between Naylor and Torres over the last few years…but I would have been happy with the Yankees giving Torres 5/$80m before the 2024 season.
“More than that, I think it’s a product of teams being a little looser with the QO. It’s not just a formality for stars, it’s a legitimate market-rate offer for players who are either merely above average or have a history of injury. If you’re going to sign a one-year prove-it deal anyway, why waste the whole offseason waiting for it to come?”
I think this is spot on and would even take it a bit further. Beyond the deals, there’s a lot of downstream benefit for the teams here by knowing that they have these deals locked in so early in the FA market. The Yankees can approach the Bellinger negotiations knowing they have a backup plan. The Brewers can evaluate Peralta trade options knowing they have Woodruff in the fold. The Cubs may look at the starter market differently knowing they filled a rotation spot. And so on.
“This year, nearly one in four qualified free agents decided to bank the offer”
Four out of 13 (30.8%) is notably more than one in four (25%).