Like I stated in my feverish reside protection, there will likely be a good deal to unpack from the Jed Hoyer end-of-season presser in the days and weeks forward. Sometimes, you don’t even understand what you in reality heard till another issues occur (or don’t), and you’ll glance again and notice with larger readability what used to be if truth be told being urged. There’s a lengthy tail to a lot of these things that isn’t straight away “news.”
One factor Hoyer stated that does qualify as “news” for nowadays’s functions, alternatively, used to be his affirmation that the Cubs are going to be making catcher Willson Contreras a Qualifying Offer after the playoffs. The phrases “obviously” and “definitely” have been used. So it’s no longer even a shut name for the Cubs.
For those that don’t know, or those that want a refresher: the Qualifying Offer is a one-year contract at a positive worth stage – this 12 months’s figures to be round $19 million – that the approaching unfastened agent can settle for or reject. The be offering should come inside 5 days of the finish of the World Series, after which the participant has ten days to make his choice.
If the participant accepts the Qualifying Offer, it’s easy sufficient: he simply signed a new one-year handle the workforce.
If the participant rejects the Qualifying Offer, alternatively, two issues turn out to be true: (1) if the participant indicators with a new workforce, his former workforce will obtain draft pick out repayment (the stage of which is determined by marketplace measurement and comfort tax standing); and (2) the participant’s signing workforce will lose positive issues (once more, the stage of which is determined by marketplace measurement and comfort tax standing – as low as a 3rd spherical pick out for small-market golf equipment, ranging as much as up to a 2d and fifth, plus $1 million in world unfastened agent bonus pool area, for groups over the luxurious tax).
For the Cubs and Contreras: if he indicators in other places after rejecting a Qualifying Offer, the Cubs would obtain a compensatory draft pick out after the 2nd spherical in the 2023 draft (notice: for a large-market workforce like the Cubs, the measurement of contract Contreras indicators does no longer subject in any respect).
The workforce that indicators Contreras must weigh what they’re dropping in signing him, alternatively, which affects the ticket they might be prepared to pay. It is imaginable that, as soon as hooked up to draft pick out repayment, many groups will make a decision a broad, multi-year deal for Contreras isn’t fascinating. If sufficient groups challenge to really feel that approach, then Contreras and his advisors could be sensible to just accept the Qualifying Offer from the Cubs.
I believe this is an not going end result, however given the questions on Contreras’s worth that popped up at the Trade Deadline, it does need to be preserved as a risk. As I wrote sooner than in this matter:
Contreras has certainly one of the perfect bats in the back of the plate in baseball, however heading into his age 31 season, it does fear me that we’re getting those indicators – these types of feedback, and likewise the approach the industry cut-off date performed out – that Contreras doesn’t do the receiving/game-planning/working-with-pitchers stuff neatly sufficient to be seen as a dead-bang glaring famous person beginning catcher for any workforce.
And once more, if that’s a actual belief in the market, it’s going to be a actual factor for his marketplace.
It isn’t unimaginable to consider a state of affairs the place (1) the Cubs make a decision they worth Contreras, at a minimal, on a one-year, $19-ish million deal (the expected worth of a Qualifying Offer), and (2) Contreras’s agent surveys the panorama and determines there isn’t going to be a obviously higher be offering in the market *when hooked up to draft pick out repayment.* If that have been to occur, up to it could suck for Contreras, he could be steered to just accept the Qualifying Offer.
The Cubs, if so, don’t get an additional draft pick out, however they do get Contreras again on a cheap one-year deal. Even in a global the place the Cubs choose to offer extra of the catching begins to Yan Gomes and P.J. Higgins, it’s no longer like Contreras can’t nonetheless be fairly treasured in a decreased catching function, after which getting a majority of his at bats between DH and 1B, as an example. It is probably not the Cubs’ most well-liked or splendid set-up, however there aren’t too many unhealthy one-year contracts like that.
Would it in reality come to that?
There’s a controversy that, whilst a Designated Hitter, Contreras is value far more than 1/$19M, even with the draft pick out repayment hooked up. When I consider it that approach, I’ve bother seeing him utterly not able to search out a, say, 3 or four-year deal in the market at a cast AAV.
Of path, that’s the place you begin to surprise about whether or not there’s a candy spot for an extension, the place the Cubs may just signal Contreras for lower than “market” worth (on account of his possibility of draft pick out repayment being hooked up), and Contreras may just get extra from the Cubs than he would realistically get in other places. I don’t wish to get my hopes up, however there are some inefficiencies being created by way of the Qualifying Offer machine right here.
That is all to mention: that ten-day length after the Cubs make the Qualifying Offer is most definitely going to be a anxious one for Contreras and his reps, as they are attempting to determine what the marketplace would undergo for him, and whether or not there are certainly inefficiencies that push them in a single course or the different.