As expected, Chicago Cubs free agent outfielder Seiya Suzuki received a Qualifying Offer from the team, which would pay him $23.15 million in 2027 if he accepted it. He will not accept it, of course, because he is going to get a whole lot more than that in free agency. If and when he signs elsewhere, provided the compensation rules stay in place, the Cubs will receive a compensatory draft pick after the 4th round in the 2027 amateur draft.
That isn’t to say the Cubs can’t or won’t engage with him in free agency on a possible return to the team – no one is particularly eager to see his bat go away – but with such heavy needs on the pitching side, it’s possible the Cubs will look to allocate the biggest chunk of their offseason budget to pitchers, leaving little for bats of Suzuki’s caliber.
Other players receiving a Qualifying Offer this year, per Joel Sherman: Randy Arozarena of the Mariners, Jake Bauers of the Brewers, David Bednar of the Yankees, Ryan Jeffers of the Twins, Brandon Lowe of the Pirates, Adrián Morejón of the Padres, and Trevor Rogers of the Orioles.
Among those, Arozarena, Lowe, and Rogers are guaranteed to decline. The dollar figure is high for a reliever like Morejon and Bednar, who COULD decide to accept (though I’d bet strongly on Morejon, at least, declining). Being attached to draft pick compensation can sometimes sting the markets for guys like Bednar. Jeffers seems very likely to do well in free agency, so I expect him to decline. Bauers is a mild surprise, given that the Brewers did this last year with Brandon Woodruff and arguably got burned, but I tend to think he rejects in favor of one big payday after his monster breakout year.
Players have 15 days to decide whether to accept or reject a Qualifying Offer.
A reminder on how things work from there, plus some earlier comments on the unique nature of this offseason:
The Cubs are going to be over the Competitive Balance Tax in 2026 for the first time in a while, and you may recall that changes the QO math in two ways. If the Cubs lose a QO-rejecting free agent (Suzuki, likely), the compensation pick they get back comes after the fourth round – the worst tier in the system, and a significant step down from where their comp pick would land as a non-payor (after the second round). Moreover, if the Cubs sign a QO-rejecting free agent from another team, they’d surrender their second AND fifth highest picks plus $1 million in international bonus pool money, compared to just their second highest pick and $500K for non-payors.
None of these differences are catastrophic, but they are very real considerations as we look ahead to the Cubs’ offseason.
Speaking of looking ahead, there’s another unique wrinkle this time around. The current CBA expires in December, and a lockout is widely expected. The Qualifying Offer process itself plays out before all that – the offer window is five days after the World Series, with players having a week to decide – so the decisions get made under the existing rules. But the consequences very likely carry into the 2027 season, whatever that looks like by the time the next CBA gets sorted out.
So, for example, a player weighing $23.15 million for one year against a potentially frozen market may lean toward accepting in a way he wouldn’t in a normal offseason. Then again, teams tend to spend more after a new CBA is inked, so maybe it cuts the other way and the player is more likely to want to wait it out. THEN AGAIN, what if the new CBA has a salary cap baked in, and that impacts his future deal? THEN AGAIN AGAIN, what if the floor in the new CBA actually means more buyers for his services?
THEN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN, what if the penalties change midstream in one direction or the other for the teams signing them? Everything stayed the same last time around, so we don’t actually know how it would play out if the new CBA has fundamentally different rules. A single year of grandfathering? Immediate changes, old QO’s be damned? No idea.
So, yeah, the CBA fight is a significant wrinkle to the process that makes it a little difficult to project how these decisions will play out.
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