Colby Rasmus Accepting Qualifying Offer, Makes History

Rasmus, Anderson and Wieters are very different players, but it’s worth wondering if any of them will be worth $15.8 million next season. This past season, Anderson totaled a 3.69 ERA and a groundball percentage at a whopping 66 percent.

Mike Napoli and Nelson Cruz both declined such offers from the Rangers in the past, and they have one outstanding to starting pitcher Yovani Gallardo that must be decided upon by Friday afternoon. Twenty players were tagged with qualifying offers.

Dave Cameron of FanGraphs projected that Rasmus would get a three year deal worth $42 million overall, while Jon Heyman had him at four years for $50 million.

Of the remaining 16 players, several, but not all, could see their earning potential this off-season harmed by the draft pick compensation attached to their signing (teams re-signing their own players, as the Blue Jays did with Estrada, do not lose a pick). Despite the down year, Wieters was still the cream of this year’s free agent catcher crop. It makes a great deal of sense for Wieters to re-sign with his club given that he has only played 101 games over the past two seasons due to injuries.

Brett Anderson of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Matt Wieters of the Baltimore Orioles have accepted the qualifying offers they were tendered by their respective teams. Rasmus hit.238/.314/.475 with 25 home runs in 137 games in 2015, while playing all three outfield positions.

Wieters is coming off a season in which his return from Tommy John elbow reconstruction previous year was slowed.

Individual motivations aside, one thing is clear: the QO process will never be the same. That pattern has accelerated in the last three years, resulting in just 5.9 K/9 this past season, due in part to a drop in velocity. All four have rejected qualifying offers.

It’s also possible the system will change. True power hitters like Davis are hard to come by, and he could be considered as one of the best hitters in free agency.

Before Thursday, the qualifying offer was little more than a formality, a rubber-stamp, a foregone conclusion. Take the $15.8 million away from that, he can still match that $36 million three-year deal with a two-year deal of $20.2 million.