The new compensation system for free agents is a little different than it was before. The old system overvalued relievers because of some bizarre reasons, and it also allowed teams to get draft picks for departing free agents simply by offering them arbitration. This offseason, teams needed to decide if they were going to offer their free agents the “qualifying offer”, which was set at $13.3 million. If the free agents declined, only then would teams get a compensatory draft pick.
Top free agents spit on qualifying offers
PITTT-OOOOO
Nine players were offered the qualifying offer. All of them declined. Look for more players to get the qualifying offer next year.
Michael Bourn, Josh Hamilton, Hiroki Kuroda, Adam LaRoche, Kyle Lohse, Rafael Soriano, Nick Swisher, and B.J. Upton were the players to whom the offer was extended, and all of them rejected it. David Ortiz re-signed before he had to decide on the offer.
Several players were not offered a qualifying offer, such as Angel Pagan and Mike Napoli, who would have been likely to reject it. That seems really odd right about now.
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