The Blue Jays and the Qualifying Offer

Earlier this week, a report from the Associated Press confirmed the price of this year’s qualifying offer: $22.025 million. That number, the average of the 125 highest MLB salaries in 2025, is just under a million dollars higher than last year’s $21.05 million QO.

The qualifying offer system gives teams a way to receive draft pick compensation for the loss of a player in free agency. If a team extends the QO to a player who rejects it and signs with another club, his original team will receive a compensatory draft selection. The placement of the draft pick depends on the team in question. Because the Blue Jays will pay the luxury tax this season, their additional selection would come after the end of the fourth round. 

The qualifying offer system also penalizes teams for signing free agents who rejected a qualifying offer. As CBT payors, the Blue Jays would be penalized particularly harshly. If they sign a free agent who rejected another team’s QO this winter, they would forfeit their second- and fifth-highest picks in next summer’s draft, in addition to $1 million of international bonus pool space for the upcoming signing period. If they sign a second free agent who rejected the QO, they would also sacrifice their third- and sixth-highest draft picks.

The Blue Jays signed their first QO free agent in the 2014-15 offseason, when they brought in Russell Martin on a five-year, $82 million deal. (His former team, the Pirates, would end up drafting Gold Glove winner Ke'Bryan Hayes with their compensatory pick.) That same offseason, the Jays also extended their first QO. They made the offer to Melky Cabrera, who rejected it and ultimately signed with the White Sox. 

The Blue Jays have since extended qualifying offers to six more players: Marco Estrada, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Marcus Semien, Robbie Ray, and Matt Chapman. Estrada and Bautista rejected the QO but later re-signed with Toronto, while Encarnacion, Semien, Ray, and Chapman signed elsewhere, securing compensation for the Jays.

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have signed three more QO free agents since Martin: George Springer, Chris Bassitt, and, most recently, Anthony Santander.

This year’s deadline for teams to extend qualifying offers – five days after the conclusion of the World Series – will be here before we know it. So, let’s talk through what decisions Ross Atkins and Co. will (and won't) have to make before then. 

Will Receive Qualifying Offer

• Bo Bichette

There is no question the Blue Jays will extend a qualifying offer to Bo Bichette, and there’s no question he’s going to reject it. Still 27 for another five months, Bichette will be one of the younger free agents on the market, and he’s coming off what was arguably the best offensive season of his career. He’ll be looking for a contract akin to the seven-year, $182 million pact Willy Adames signed last winter. 

Not Eligible for Qualifying Offer

• Shane Bieber
• Chris Bassitt
• Max Scherzer
• Seranthony Domínguez 
• Ty France
• Isiah Kiner-Falefa

Making things nice and easy for me, the rest of Toronto’s impending free agents are ineligible to receive the qualifying offer. Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt each received qualifying offers earlier in their careers; Scherzer from the Tigers in 2014, before he signed his seven-year, $210 million deal with the Nationals, and Bassitt from the Mets in 2022, before he signed his three-year, $63 million deal with the Blue Jays. 

As for Shane Bieber, Seranthony Domínguez, Ty France, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, they are all ineligible because they came to the Blue Jays mid-season. To qualify for a QO, a player must have spent the entire season on his team’s roster. 

With that said, Bieber and Bassitt are the only ones out of this group who would have had any chance of receiving a QO anyway.

Bieber was able to sign a two-year, $26 million deal last year despite pitching just 12 innings in 2024 before Tommy John surgery ended his season. Now that he’s proven he’s healthy, he’s a safe bet to decline his $16 million player option for 2026, and he should be able to command a significantly higher guarantee on the open market. 

Meanwhile, Bassitt is one of just nine pitchers to have made at least 30 starts and qualified for the ERA title in each of the past three seasons. Only six pitchers have thrown more innings with a lower ERA in that time. In other words, he has given the Blue Jays exactly what they signed up for at a $21 million AAV three years ago. So, it would be perfectly reasonable for the team to offer him one more year at just over $22 million – especially since they wouldn’t have to give up a draft pick or any international bonus pool space this time. Of course, for precisely the reason the Jays had to sacrifice their second-highest draft pick and $500,000 of international bonus pool space in 2023, this whole point is moot. A player can only receive the QO once in his career, so Bassitt is off the hook.