{"id":11986,"date":"2016-02-29T12:19:27","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T17:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11986"},"modified":"2016-02-29T12:19:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T17:19:41","slug":"qualifying-offers-are-they-working-updated-for-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11986","title":{"rendered":"Qualifying Offers; Are they Working (updated for 2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6372\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DesmondIan-ST2013-Drew-Kinback-natsnq.com_.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6372\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6372\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6372\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DesmondIan-ST2013-Drew-Kinback-natsnq.com_-300x214.jpg\" alt=\"Desmond gets a Q.O. ... and gets screwed. Photo Drew Kinback\/Natsnq.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"214\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DesmondIan-ST2013-Drew-Kinback-natsnq.com_-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/DesmondIan-ST2013-Drew-Kinback-natsnq.com_.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6372\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Desmond got a Q.O. &#8230; and gets screwed. Photo Drew Kinback\/Natsnq.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When former Nat <strong>Ian Desmond<\/strong> signed, he became the final Qualifying Offer-attached player to come off the Free Agency board for the pre-2016 season.\u00a0 So its time to publish our recurring &#8220;Are Qualifying Offers working&#8221; post.\u00a0 We first visited this topic ahead of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=8768\">2014 season<\/a> and again <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10255\">prior to the 2015 season<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think i&#8217;m &#8220;burying the lede&#8221; by saying that, No, Qualifying Offers are not working (at least as far as the players are concerned).\u00a0 But lets look at the results of this past off-season&#8217;s free agents with compensatory draft pick attachments and do some analysis (fyi, from here on out &#8220;Qualifying Offer&#8221; will be abbreviated QO):<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1UEiZzwWarVP3PfCtZeYTVBqC49dmBut21O7UhB17htQ\/edit?usp=sharing\">QO Worksheet in Google Docs,<\/a> which tracks all the QO-offered candidates going back to 2012 and is the basis of a lot of this analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some summary stats for this year&#8217;s QO candidates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>20 Free Agents<\/strong> were offered QOs heading into this past off-season.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a significantly higher number than in any of the year&#8217;s past (9 after the 2012 season, 13 after 2013 and 12 after 2014)<\/li>\n<li><strong>3 Took the QO<\/strong> to remain with their original team (<strong>Brett Anderson<\/strong>, <strong>Colby Rasmus<\/strong> and <strong>Matt Wieters<\/strong>).\u00a0 This represents the first time that anyone has actually taken a QO and, frankly, was something I never though we&#8217;d see.\u00a0 The players union has convinced players to not act rationally to such an extent that I was sure that there was an unstated agreement to never take a QO.\u00a0\u00a0 After all was said and done though, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s probably 4-5 more players who probably wish they HAD taken the QO.\u00a0 As it stands, Anderson, Rasmus and Wieters all get huge raises and nice healthy &#8220;pillow contracts&#8221; to re-establish value for the following off-season.<\/li>\n<li><strong>3 more eventually Re-Signed<\/strong> with their QO-offering team (<strong>Chris Davis, Marco Estrada<\/strong> and <strong>Alex Gordon<\/strong>).\u00a0 I&#8217;d only qualify one of these three as really being a significant re-signing; Estrada&#8217;s 2015 salary was $3.9M and he declined a $15.8M QO.\u00a0 I guess you could argue that Gordon&#8217;s market was depressed by the QO &#8230; but I also think he was reticent to &#8220;leave home&#8221; and leave a team at the top of the game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>9 guys who got paid<\/strong> just as they would have anyway; 5 of which got many millions more in AAV than their walk year contract.\u00a0 But these are also the marquee FAs of this past off-season, so QOs were meaningless in the equation.\u00a0 We&#8217;re talking about <strong>Zack Greinke<\/strong> (6\/$205M), <strong>Chris Davis<\/strong> (7\/$161M), <strong>Jason Heyward<\/strong> (8yr\/$184M), <strong>Justin Upton<\/strong> (6\/$132M) and <strong>Jordan Zimmermann<\/strong> (5yr\/$110M).<\/li>\n<li><strong>8 of the 20 players<\/strong> who ended up taking LESS in AAV with their new contract.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, two of these players (Estrada and <strong>Ian Kennedy<\/strong>) may have taken less in AAV but both ended out well on the &#8220;plus side&#8221; of the free agent accounting; Estrada signed a 2yr\/$26M deal (career earnings prior to this point: just over $10M) while Kennedy signed an astounding 5yr\/$70M deal after completing a mediocre season in San Diego that had me personally predicting he may be still unsigned in June.\u00a0 But the other Six?\u00a0 Well they&#8217;re the QO system victims&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><strong>6 Players who were clearly negatively affected<\/strong> by the QO and have a serious beef with the system.\u00a0 Lets look at them one-by-one\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Dexter Fowler<\/strong>: Walk year of $9.5M salary, after a media-misstep re-signs with his original club for 1yr\/$8M with a $5M buyout (so $13M guaranteed) and a team-affordable option year for next year.\u00a0 Now, you could argue that Fowler took a &#8220;home team discount&#8221; to stay with what everyone is calling the best team in the majors and I wouldn&#8217;t argue.\u00a0 But Fowler was just the kind of mid-level veteran who frankly never should have declined the QO in the first place.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Yovani Gallardo<\/strong>: Walk year of $13M salary, a guy who just badly over-estimated his market after posting mediocre numbers in Texas.\u00a0 Ends up with a sh*tty franchise (Baltimore) who hemmed and hawed with his medicals (as they&#8217;ve done in the past) and he ends up with just a 2yr\/$22M contract.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hisashi Iwakuma<\/strong> had a walk year of $7M and who probably wouldn&#8217;t be on this list were it not for his own medical issues causing the Dodgers to balk at a 3yr deal; he goes back to Seattle on a discounted 2yr\/$20M deal.\u00a0 I guess its arguable whether the QO really was affecting this guy; it didn&#8217;t seem like he wanted to even explore the market outside of a handful of west coast teams.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Howie Kendrick<\/strong> languished on the FA market until the end of January before decamping back for his old team, signing for just 2yrs\/$20M.\u00a0 Another guy who just never was going to be worth giving up a 1st rounder.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Daniel Murphy<\/strong> ended up taking $3.3M\/year in AAV less than the QO value with Washington; it remains to be seen whether the Nats vastly over-paid for a poor defensive 2B whose value seems to be entirely propped up by a fantastic 2015 post-season.<\/li>\n<li>Last, but not least, <strong>Ian Desmond<\/strong> who managed to leave more on the table (in terms of delta in his new contract AAV versus what he gave up in QO guaranteed salary) than ANY OTHER player in the history of the system.\u00a0 His 1yr\/$8M deal is 7.8M less than his QO; that&#8217;s more &#8220;lost money&#8221; than even <strong>Kendrys Morales<\/strong>, <strong>Nelson Cruz<\/strong>, or <strong>Stephen Drew<\/strong> left on the table &#8230; and a couple of these guys didn&#8217;t sign until May or June!\u00a0 And this doesn&#8217;t even mention the 9-figure extension he turned down a couple years ago.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There have been plenty of lamenting pieces on Desmond in the last few days; i hope he&#8217;s not reading about how everyone is calling him a dummy for leaving $100M on the table between his spurned 7-year Washington deal and his declined QO.\u00a0 He just got unlucky; he had an awful walk year, he fell squarely into the &#8220;mid-level veteran not worth giving up a draft pick&#8221; category, and he hit the off-season at a time when a huge number of teams are, to use a word, tanking.\u00a0 Half the teams in the NL and a couple more in the AL are in positions where they&#8217;re not spending extra dollars in FA and are depending on in-house options for SS; combine that with those teams who already have quality short stops and you suddenly have a completely dried-up market for Desmond.\u00a0 Take a quick peek at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rotoworld.com\/teams\/depth-charts\/mlb.aspx\">RotoWorld depth charts for the NL<\/a> and look at the guys who are slated to start &#8230; and then ask yourself if Desmond is a better option.<\/p>\n<p>I still can&#8217;t quite figure out specifically why the White Sox didn&#8217;t sign him; who is their slated starter at short?\u00a0 They had a protected 1st rounder and are not quitting on 2016, so instead of getting a quality guy like Desmond they&#8217;ve signed <strong>Jimmy Rollins<\/strong> as a MLFA\/NRI and that&#8217;s who might be the starter?\u00a0\u00a0 The Mets are another obvious team that may be wishing they&#8217;d signed Desmond when it becomes more apparent that the guy they actually signed (<strong>Asdrubal Cabrera<\/strong>) can no longer play SS .. or hit for that matter.\u00a0 Anyway&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I think Desmond has gotten pretty sh*tty representation, honestly.\u00a0 He should have signed the extension and not held out for an <strong>Elvis Andrus<\/strong> contract that was never going to happen.\u00a0 And he should have read the tea-leaves, seen how the market was looking, seen how teams are hoarding 1st round draft picks, seen how his .233 BA was going to hamper his market and just taken the QO to try for a bounce-back season.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s lots of people talking about the QO system and what to do with it; i&#8217;m guessing its going to be front and center in the next CBA.\u00a0 But how do you compensate teams for losing FAs?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have a good option and I don&#8217;t think the &#8220;just sever ties between FA and the draft&#8221; is the answer either.\u00a0 I guess we&#8217;ll see some creative solutions proposed as we get closer to the CBA negotiations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When former Nat Ian Desmond signed, he became the final Qualifying Offer-attached player to come off the Free Agency board for the pre-2016 season.\u00a0 So its time to publish our recurring &#8220;Are Qualifying Offers working&#8221; post.\u00a0 We first visited this topic ahead of the 2014 season and again prior to the 2015 season. I don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[804,2370,868,1030,174,1859,2903,1307,2055,1940,114,243,803,513,43,425,1568,1336,2094,358,1014,1251,254],"class_list":["post-11986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","tag-alex-gordon","tag-asdrubal-cabrera","tag-brett-anderson","tag-chris-davis","tag-colby-rasmus","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-dexter-fowler","tag-elvis-andrus","tag-hisashi-iwakuma","tag-howie-kendrick","tag-ian-desmond","tag-ian-kennedy","tag-jason-heyward","tag-jimmy-rollins","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-justin-upton","tag-kendrys-morales","tag-marco-estrada","tag-matt-wieters","tag-nelson-cruz","tag-stephen-drew","tag-yovani-gallardo","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11986"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11996,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986\/revisions\/11996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}