After yesterday’s debacle (and then last week’s Ohtani debacle), I’m going to try to do this without having to edit the post mid-day. That probably won’t work, but it’s the breaks.
Today is (not non-offer day…) qualifying offer acceptance/rejection day. A few weeks ago, 13 players were tagged with the QO, which you can see here. Will either of them accept the QO and stay with his team and teammates for another round in 2026?
There are a few factors to consider.
First, accepting the QO is quite rare. Going back to the time the draft pick penalties were instituted, my rough count was nine QOs accepted out of about 70 QOs offered. That’s a rate of about 13 percent (I may have miscounted or remembered my previous count), which would indicate one or two acceptances if everything went at the usual pace. And there are a few guys in this QO class, like Zac Gallen and Michael King, who could probably use a one-year cushion deal.
Anyway, the lockout that looms in 2027 could change the calculus. There was an unnamed executive who said the general expectation was that everyone would reject the QO, because taking a guaranteed one-year deal that could rebuild that value while heading into a potentially canceled or shortened season isn’t much of an advantage, when you think about it. I won’t elaborate too much because I don’t know if this point needs to be beaten to death, so hopefully you get the idea.
The other thing is that rejecting the QO doesn’t actually stop the player from re-signing with his former team, or doing a similar cushion-type deal in general. All it really does is make the market for the player a little worse, because every team other than the QO offering team has to bear additional costs to sign the player. So there isn’t that That There could be a lot of harm in rejecting the offer unless the player wants to move on. The same number of players reject the QO and re-sign with the offering team if the QO accepts, so the penalty has only come into play in about three-quarters of QO offers.
Anyway, what do you think?
#accept #qualifying #offer #today