As the regular season winds down, almost half the league is focused on the upcoming offseason. One of the first major decisions teams which need to make is whether to issue any of their free agents a qualifying offer. That needs to happen within five days of the end of the World Series.
The qualifying offer is a one-year proposal at a fixed rate — calculated as the average of the 125 highest salaries in MLB. MLBTR contributor Ethan Hullihen estimates that this year’s QO price will be set around $23.1MM. Teams can only issue a QO to a player who had spent the entire preceding season on their roster.
Players who are issued the QO have a couple weeks to gauge the early market before deciding whether to accept. If they accept, they have full no-trade protection until June 15 of the following season (as does any major league free agent who signs a big league deal). If they decline, the team that issued the QO would be entitled to draft compensation if they sign elsewhere. Signing another club’s qualified free agent comes with draft and potentially international signing bonus pool penalties that can serve as a drag on the market for mid-level players. The compensation and penalties for losing/signing qualified free agents varies depending on teams’ revenue sharing and luxury tax statuses.
Each fall at MLBTR, we preview the upcoming qualifying offer decisions. We’ll start with the position player group and turn to the pitching side in a few days. This year’s hitting class is the worst in recent memory, leaving only a few players who are locks to receive and reject a QO in search of a multi-year contract.
No-Doubters
Randy Arozarena (Mariners) Seiya Suzuki (Cubs)Arozarena and Suzuki are having excellent seasons that should make it an easy call for them to decline the qualifying offer. Arozarena is wrapping up his sixth consecutive 20-20 season and carries a .272/.372/.461 slash line across 602 plate appearances after today’s series finale with Texas. He’s mashing at a .300/.388/.509 clip outside of Seattle’s pitcher-friendly T-Mobile Park.
Suzuki has rebounded without issue from a knee sprain suffered during the World Baseball Classic. He has 24 home runs with a .267/.366/.475 mark over 573 trips to the plate. He has been among the best hitters in the National League since the All-Star Break. MLBTR readers are essentially evenly split on whether he’ll beat the five-year, $85MM contract he secured when he came over from Japan in 2022. Arozarena and Suzuki are each entering their age-32 seasons and probably won’t stretch beyond four or five years, but a multi-year deal at a similar annual value to the QO price should be on the table.
Likely Recipients
Ryan Jeffers (Twins) Brandon Lowe (Pirates)Jeffers and Lowe aren’t too far behind Suzuki and Arozarena. They’d probably be locks for the QO if they played for a traditional big spender. It’s a little riskier for a team like Minnesota or Pittsburgh to offer a $23.1MM salary at the beginning of the offseason. They can probably feel comfortable doing so in these cases, though, as Jeffers and Lowe each figure to reject in search of a multi-year contract.
The 29-year-old Jeffers is the clear top of the class behind the plate. He’s hitting .270/.372/.500 with 14 home runs and a career-best strikeout and walk profile. A hamate fracture/surgery cost him a couple months and has limited him to 81 games, but this is Jeffers’ fourth straight season as a well above-average hitting catcher. He’s an unexceptional but passable defender who could take aim at a four- or five-year deal. That’d probably come at a lower salary than the QO price, but most players would prefer the security of a long-term deal that pays $17-20MM annually over one year and $23MM.
Lowe is one longball shy of a second straight 30-homer season. He’s batting .259/.328/.479 over 597 plate appearances in his first year in Pittsburgh. Lowe has avoided the injured list for the first time in five years. He leads second basemen in home runs this year and is second at the position (behind Ketel Marte) dating back to 2022.
There are some questions with Lowe’s profile. He’s already 32 years old. There’s a lot of swing-and-miss to his game and he doesn’t provide much against left-handed pitching. Lowe has graded very well defensively this year, but that’s an exceptional outlier compared to the rest of his career.
All that said, there are only a few middle infielders who can hit right-handed pitching the way that Lowe does year in and year out. This is his first trip to free agency and, given his age, probably the only time he’ll really cash in. He should reject the QO and look for a three-plus year deal. Even if he surprisingly accepts and doubles his salary from this year’s $11.5MM figure, the difference is the roughly same amount of money the Pirates burned ($12MM) by signing Marcell Ozuna last offseason.
Minnesota and Pittsburgh are both revenue sharing recipients, which adds a little extra incentive for them to extend the QO. They’d receive the highest compensation (a pick right after the first round in the 2027 draft) if Lowe and Jeffers decline and sign a $50MM+ contract with another team.
Borderline Call
Jazz Chisholm Jr. (Yankees)For the second straight season, the Yankees have an interesting qualifying offer decision. Last winter, Trent Grisham’s offensive breakout made him a QO candidate — an outcome that was highly improbable entering the season. (Grisham accepted and has had a mediocre season around a few injuries.) It’s the opposite scenario for Chisholm, who entered the year as a seeming QO lock but has had a fairly disappointing walk year.
The lefty-hitting Chisholm, currently on the injured list with a thumb sprain, has a league average .232/.312/.403 slash over 520 plate appearances. He has popped 19 homers and is third in MLB with 40 stolen bases, but it’s his worst production on a rate basis in five years. The power-speed combination and Chisholm’s youth (29 in February) probably give him the highest ceiling of any position player in this class. Yet there’s also a lot of swing-and-miss and free agency hasn’t been kind to second basemen over the last couple years.
Detroit made Gleyber Torres, another 29-year-old second baseman, a qualifying offer last offseason. Torres was coming off a .256/.358/.387 season with 16 home runs, a similarly valuable platform year to the one Chisholm has posted. Torres accepted. That doesn’t mean Chisholm is guaranteed to do the same, but the Yankees would need to be comfortable with the possibility.
New York will presumably have George Lombard Jr. atop the shortstop depth chart going into 2027. Do they believe Anthony Volpe can be the everyday second baseman? If not, would they prefer to make a run at Luis Arraez or Lowe than keeping Chisholm? Could they move Chisholm to third base and cut bait with Ryan McMahon if the former takes the qualifying offer? GM Brian Cashman and his staff will need some idea of all those questions by the first week of the offseason. The Yankees are luxury tax payors, so their compensation for losing a qualified free agent is in the lowest tier (i.e. a selection after the fourth round).
Long Shots
Jake Bauers (Brewers) J.P. Crawford (Mariners) Ty France (Padres) Ian Happ (Cubs)It’d be a surprise if anyone in this group receives a qualifying offer. Happ might have the best case given the Cubs’ comparatively higher payrolls and his standing in the organization. A four-time Gold Glove winner in left field, he’s working on his fourth straight 20-homer campaign.
Happ hit 13 homers with a .230/.349/.469 slash through the end of May but has struggled for three and a half months now. He’s hitting .210/.307/.369 with a 30% strikeout rate since the beginning of June and has ceded time against left-handed pitching to Tyrone Taylor. The Cubs probably aren’t re-signing both Happ and Suzuki, so it’s unlikely they’d risk tying up $23.1MM on their left fielder within the first couple weeks of the offseason.
Crawford is the top shortstop in a weak class. He’s having a typically solid but not elite season, batting .221/.344/.341 with 10 homers across 419 plate appearances. Even if Seattle wants to bring him back, it’d be more sensible to look into a two- or three-year contract at a much lower annual rate than the QO price.
France and Bauers have had fantastic 2026 seasons but don’t have the career success to support a qualifying offer. France was limited to a minor league contract as recently as last offseason. Bauers has never made more than $2.7MM in a season and would become the second-highest paid player on the Brewers. They’d almost certainly both accept if offered but are likely looking at two-year deals at lower annual sums.
Ineligible
Luis Arraez (Phillies) Bo Bichette (Mets) Trent Grisham (Yankees) Joc Pederson (Rangers) Gleyber Torres (Tigers) Daulton Varsho (Astros) Taylor Ward (Mariners)Everyone in this group is ineligible for a qualifying offer. They either changed teams midseason — Arraez, Varsho, and Ward — or have previously received a qualifying offer in their careers. The CBA prohibits a player from being issued a qualifying offer more than once.
Arraez is the only one who’d likely have gotten one either way. Bichette probably isn’t going to be a free agent at all, considering he’d need to walk away from the remaining two years and $84MM on his contract. Ward’s bat has cratered after he was traded to Seattle, while Grisham and Varsho have had down years as the potential top center fielder in the class.
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