Do you remember where you were when Colby Rasmus made history? The 29-year-old outfielder is expected to become the first player ever to accept a qualifying offer, according to Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports. That means Rasmus will return to the Houston Astros next season on a one-year, $15.8 million contract.
It's tough to really say whether the news comes as a surprise. On the one hand, no player has ever accepted a qualifying offer. On the other hand, many speculated that Rasmus might be better off accepting a QO once it was announced that the Astros had offered him one. The deadline to accept a QO is Friday, so we'll know shortly whether another player will join Rasmus.
Had Rasmus declined the QO, it would have cost other teams a first-round draft pick in order to sign the outfielder. While Rasmus smashed 25 home runs last season, he hit just .238/.314/.475 over 485 plate appearances. That's not exactly the type of player you want to give up a first-round pick in order to acquire.
On top of that, the market for outfielders is strong this offseason. Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Alex Gordon and Yoenis Cespedes are among the best players available, and all of them play the same position as Rasmus. Dexter Fowler is also out there, while both Chris Davis and Ben Zobrist have experience in the outfield.
Rasmus' agents knew that, obviously, and may have figured accepting a qualifying offer was Rasmus' best option.
Honestly, that's not a bad strategy. Teams would have shied away from spending a first-round pick to sign Rasmus. It's definitely possible Rasmus would have been forced to go the Kendrys Morales/Stephen Drew route, and wait until June to sign with another club.
As you'll recall, Morales declined a qualifying offer from the Seattle Mariners in 2013. No other team wanted to surrender a first-round pick to sign him, so he waited until June (when teams no longer had to give up a pick) to sign with the Minnesota Twins. Stephen Drew did the same thing after the Boston Red Sox gave him a QO, and signed with the New York Yankees in June.
Both players had awful seasons, and Rasmus probably didn't want to get stuck in a similar situation. We'll never know if Rasmus would have been forced to wait until June to sign, but it certainly seemed like a strong possibility considering his numbers and the outfield market.
In the end, there's no such thing as a bad one-year offer. Rasmus might be overpaid for 2016, but it doesn't really matter. Either he performs better and is rewarded with a hefty deal in next offseason, or he tanks and the Astros get rid of him after just one season. Both sides found a way to win here.
Now that Rasmus has made history (that's not a sentence most expected to ever read), it opens up bigger questions about the qualifying offer process. Will we see other players follow Rasmus' lead and return to their teams on one-year deals? Or was Rasmus simply a unique case?
With the move, baseball has entered a brave, new world. Shockingly, Colby Rasmus is the player boldly leading us into the future.
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Colby Rasmus first MLB player to ever accept QO
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