No one is going to feel badly for players who turned down $14.1 million and remain unemployed, as Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales find themselves.
So put me in the extreme minority. It’s not that I am miserable for them as much as feeling the rule that has left them in this situation is dumb, unfairly hurting the earning power of very good players while not helping small-market clubs to any great extent — in fact the big winner so far in the qualifying offer game is arguably the Yankees, the last team the rule was meant to help.
Quickly on the rule: Teams can offer their free agents a qualifying offer that is the average of the top 125 players’ salaries from the previous season. That number going into the past offseason was $14.1 million.
If accepted, the player is signed for that much for the next season. If rejected, the player is a free agent. A new signing team loses either a first-round pick (top 20 records from the year before) or a second-round pick (worst 10 records) — and in both cases the club also forfeits slot money associated with that pick in the draft.
What we have learned with two years of this system is that teams will give up the pick and the money to sign elites such as Robinson Cano and Jacoby Ellsbury. But the next level of player such as Drew — let’s say players not in the top 5 percent of the game but in the 6-to-15 percent — has his market badly hurt. Because teams are much more reluctant to pay for the player, lose a draft pick and lose the slot money.
The idea of the rule was to implement the qualifying offer so that teams would think twice about offering it because the player could accept. But that really has only scared small-market clubs. Most teams see any one-year contract — even for more than the player deserves — as desirable because it avoids long-term risk.
So far all 22 players given the qualifying offer have rejected. But six of those qualifying offers were made by the Yankees (Nick Swisher, Rafael Soriano, Cano, Curtis Granderson and Hiroki Kuroda twice). Yep, the system designed to funnel extra picks to also-rans, instead, was allowing the Yankees to get either extra draft picks to make selections or have those extra picks to lose when they signed their own qualified free agents such as Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann.
This past offseason the champion huge-market Red Sox put the qualifying offer on three players (Ellsbury, Drew and Mike Napoli). Napoli wanted to stay and did, but it clearly hurt his market value.
Scott Boras has been clobbered for not reading the market properly and advising Drew and Morales to accept the offer. Fine, beat up the agent everyone loves to hate. But I think it misses the point. Drew has seven years of service, Morales six. Both would be playing at 31 this year. I know there is general distaste for how much players make, but this is their livelihood, their careers are finite and this was a chance for them to maximize their earning power, perhaps for the last time.
Why should a rule stand in the way of players who have put in their time and performed well? Especially when it is so arbitrary. For example, a player must be with one team all year to have the qualifying offer made to him. So the fact Matt Garza played with a lousy club last year (the Cubs) and was traded in July means he was unfettered as a free agent, but playing for contenders hurt Ubaldo Jimenez (Indians) and Ervin Santana (Royals), who were both qualified and had their markets diminished.
Doesn’t it go against the principles of competition that it should hurt a player to work on a contending team?
Also, to the idea of just accepting the $14.1 million: What if the player doesn’t like where he is playing? What if he hates the manager? What if the ballpark is problematic to the player’s game? What if he just wants to find out what he is worth on the open market?
Already, players have too little control over their careers, particularly if they are drafted and have to play a prescribed amount of time in one place. Can you imagine if, say, lawyers were drafted out of school and had to go to certain cities for a prescribed amount of time, even if they were the best in their class and should have their choice where to go?
Drew and Morales had earned the right to be free agents. If you want to compensate teams for losing free agents, then do so, but don’t force signing teams to lose picks or draft dollars.
My feeling is that a weighted scale should be arrived at so that, for example, if a player was signed, developed and stayed six years with one organization before leaving as a free agent that team — if it were willing to make a qualifying offer — should get two first-round picks. Think the Red Sox with Ellsbury, who they took in the 2005 draft, developed and stuck with for six seasons.
If a player spent from three-to-six seasons, a team would get one first-round pick if he left. Any shorter tenure than that, a team would get a second-round pick, which would impact Drew, who was one and done with Boston.
But here is the key: The signing team would not lose a draft pick. Compensate teams that lose free agents if they are willing to submit the qualifying offer. But don’t harm the player’s market by having the new team lose any picks.
MLB never will do it because it is benefiting from the current arrangement. But it is no good for the game that quality players are being hurt, so MLB should re-open the collective bargaining agreement to fix this.
Until then, Drew and Morales remain unemployed. They probably will stay that way until after the June draft, at which time a signing team would no longer lose a draft pick to sign them.
It is a bad rule when teams have reasons not to sign very good players and very good players have reasons to remain unsigned.
Speaking of rule changes…
There are many rules I would change in the majors beyond the qualifying offer (don’t get me started on expanding rosters in September and the DH in just one league). Here are three that I think are easy fixes:
1. On blocking the plate, treat the catcher like a college wide receiver. He must have one foot in the field of play when the ball is caught. For throws home off line, he may move a second foot off the field of play, but cannot move until the ball is released by the fielder, keeping him from prematurely blocking the plate in both situations.
2. You can assume a double play. Currently, if there is a misplay on the back end of a double play, no error is assigned because you can’t assume one. But, of course, you can. There are roughly 3,600 grounded into double plays. Maybe you can’t assume a balk — there are only about 165 of those a season. But a double play, come on — we know what those look like.
3. On the second visit to the mound by anybody — not just manager or pitching coach — the pitcher must be removed. You want to help the pace of games, keep the catcher from going out to the mound to chat without restriction. Nowadays it is because paranoia is so high that signals are being stolen, so there is constant changing of signs. You are major leaguers. Work that out in the dugout before the inning.