Qualifying Offers

OK, it's time to revisit the lack of qualifying offers made by the Indians.

We now know some things we didn't know at the time qualifying offers had to be made:

• Yasmani Grandal was offered the $17.6 million qualifying offer and rejected it.   He hasn't signed yet.  In my opinion I can't see him being as valuable as our best free agents.
• The Indians were looking for ways to cut salary this off-season and that plan would have been severely impacted if anyone had accepted a qualifying offer
• The Indians really don't seem, at the present, to care much about this level of draft choices given that they gave one away to Seattle in a recent trade.
• The Indians seem to be spending more time scouting and signing higher level talents in Latin America than they have in the past.

We also know that Michael Brantley has signed a two year deal worth $32 million and that Andrew Miller has signed a two-year deal for $22.5 million.   Cody Allen, the other reliever who might have been worth making a qualifying offer to has not yet signed.  We were not allowed to make a qualifying offer to Josh Donaldson as he was not with the club long enough.   He recently signed a 1-year deal for $23 million.

I think the last 3 bullets above really point out that the Indians really were never going to make qualifying offers to their free agents under any situation.  

Look, I am a prospect guy so I like draft choices.   I also know that if you play your cards right you can get 5-10 3rd round or better talents in a draft IF you have a lot of high draft choices to begin with as, among other things, it increases your bonus pool.  The Indians don't appear to be thinking that way and their budget constraints just made it easy for them to turn down the opportunity to get something they don't presently seem to value: extra draft choices, although I think it is fair to say that at least Michael Brantley would have rejected the offer, maybe Andrew Miller, too.

The Indians have chosen to go a different direction but let's all be aware that this was a conscious decision.   So, if we don't have enough prospects 5 years from now, one of the things we can trace it back to is the lack of value they seem to put on excess draft choices and acquiring and keeping them.