Earlier this week, Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel finally signed contracts with teams meaning that the 2018-19 offseason is finally over. The newest members of the Braves and Cubs were the final two holdouts of the last year’s free agent class and there’s no good reason each should have had to wait this long to sign a deal. There are plenty of bad reasons why they didn’t sign, but the most obvious and dumbest of reasons is that because Keuchel and Kimbrel were each extended qualifying offers, they would have cost their new team a draft pick.
The penalty for signing a player extended a qualifying offer is extremely dumb
