Confirming what most rightly anticipated to be a foregone conclusion, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer mentioned at Monday’s end-of-season press convention that the staff will “definitely” make a qualifying offer to free-agent catcher Willson Contreras (Twitter link by way of Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times). That a lot was broadly assumed from the second the staff surprisingly opted towards buying and selling Contreras prior to the Aug. 2 deadline.
An actual quantity on this yr’s qualifying offer, which is ready yearly on the common of the sport’s 125 highest-paid gamers, has not but been decided. Last yr’s qualifying offer clocked in at $18.4M, and in 2020 it was set at $18.9M.
Any participant rejecting a qualifying offer is then topic to draft-pick compensation, which means a staff selecting to signal him will be required to give up not less than one choose within the following yr’s draft (as well as to probably forfeiting assets from its worldwide bonus pool. Teams that obtain income sharing would forfeit their third-highest choice to signal a “qualified” free agent. Non-revenue sharing, non-luxury tax paying groups lose their second-highest choose and $500K of worldwide bonus pool house. The six groups that paid the posh tax this yr — Mets, Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Padres — would forfeit their second- and fifth-highest picks in addition to $1M of worldwide pool house. The Cubs, in the meantime, would obtain a compensatory choose between Competitive Balance Round B and Round 3 of subsequent summer season’s draft — usually within the No. 75 total vary.
The Cubs will nonetheless have the rest of this month and an unique five-day window to negotiate with Contreras following the completion of the World Series (as all groups do with their pending free brokers). That mentioned, Contreras, who’ll be 31 subsequent May, has been vocal about his want to stay in Chicago for a number of years now. No extension has materialized.
In all chance, Contreras will hit the open market and signal with a brand new membership — presumably one searching for extra offense behind the plate. That’s not to disparage Contreras’ glove; he boasts plus arm energy and one of many quickest pop-times in MLB (1.93 seconds, per Statcast, good for eleventh out of 83 catchers in 2022). Contreras, nevertheless, typically attracts common to below-average marks for framing pitches, and Baseball Prospectus dinged him barely in 2022 for his work blocking pitches within the grime (though that was an anomaly and he’s usually graded higher than common in that regard).
Broadly talking, Contreras is much from a legal responsibility behind the plate, significantly when it comes to controlling the working recreation. He doesn’t grade as nicely when it comes to stealing strikes for his pitchers (and for guaranteeing that borderline strikes are precisely referred to as), however he’s nonetheless a high quality possibility behind the dish — significantly when contemplating that few of his positional friends can match his work with the bat. Contreras hit .243/.349/.466 with 22 residence runs, 23 doubles and a pair of triples in 2022.
Contreras’ 132 wRC+, indicating that he was 32% higher than the league-average hitter on the plate, ranked fifth among the many 70 catchers who took not less than 100 plate appearances in 2022, solely narrowly trailing Adley Rutschman (133) and Tyler Stephenson (134) for third on the checklist behind Contreras’ personal brother, William, and Toronto’s Danny Jansen. Given that the common catcher was 11% worse than the league-average hitter, Contreras was about about 43% higher on the plate than the common backstop, by measure of wRC+. The solely catchers to produce extra round-trippers than Contreras had been Cal Raleigh, Will Smith and Salvador Perez.
Precisely the place Contreras lands in free company, at this level, is anybody’s guess. He received’t understand how issues will play out till he gauges curiosity across the league, however there’s no scarcity of groups that would look to improve behind the plate. Only seven groups — Braves, Jays, Phillies, A’s, Cubs, Dodgers, Mariners — obtained offense that was higher than that of a league-average hitter from the catcher place of their lineup this season, so even with draft compensation hooked up, Contreras ought to command a robust multi-year deal.
Discussion about this post