Kendrys Morales Reacts to Acquisition of Hart, Morrison
As a player who declined Seattle’s qualifying offer in November, Kendrys Morales is a free agent for whom any signing club besides the Mariners would need to surrender a pretty valuable draft pick.
As a player who’s capable of playing mostly just first base or DH, Kendrys Morales has been made largely redundant by the Seattle Mariners’ acquisition today both of Corey Hart and Logan Morrison (who join Jesus Montero and Justin Smoak as field players ideally deployed at one of the aforementioned positions).
One assumes, therefore, that Kendrys Morales’s reaction to Seattle’s most recent transactions — which transactions limit his options, and also probably the value of his next contract — that Morales’s reaction isn’t very different from the one portrayed here in what has never been referred to as Internet Technicolor.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Rules regarding qualifying offers are subtle and devious so my interpretation is likely wrong, but isn’t it a Thing that whosoever next employs Mr. Morales will lose a pick even if that team is the Mariners? In the possible (not likely) event that no team wishes to sign him, and that the Mariners bring him back for fewer than qualifying dollars?
They would not forfeit a pick.
If Morales signs elsewhere then the Mariners get a supplemental pick; if signs with the Mariners, they don’t get the pick that would have been between the 1st and 2nd rounds. It is quite Schrodingeresque.
Ok yeah, that’s what I thought. They don’t get the pick they forfeited, that pick simply vanishes from the draft and the supplemental round is condensed. Perhaps they sell the disavowed pick on eBAy.