The Cincinnati Reds sent out a procedural olive branch to pitcher Nick Martinez earlier this week in the form of a roughly $21 million Qualifying Offer (QO). That’s on the heels of Martinez’s excellent work during the 2024 season (3.10 ERA, 142 ERA+, 1.03 WHIP in a career high 142.1 IP) as well as him opting out of what would have been a $12 million contract for 2025 to stay with the Reds.
He is, quite simply, one of the best free agent pitchers on the market this winter, and this is what the best free agent pitchers normally get – a QO, which gives the team that issued the offer a chance to recoup some draft pick compensation should their prized former player sign elsewhere. Thing is, any team that signs Martinez other than the Reds risks forfeiting a draft pick of their own to sign such a prized free agent, meaning they’ve got to be sold not only on his ability but also his longevity to make that happen.
Martinez will turn 35 years old next year, making him far and away the oldest of the 13 free agents across Major League Baseball who received a QO this offseason. The Reds will get some draft pick compensation if he declines the QO and signs elsewhere, but they’ll only get one of those big-prize picks after the 1st round if Martinez signs for over $50 million elsewhere – something that would require a deal of at least 3 years to happen. It’s far from unprecedented for that to happen for pitchers his age, but usually those pitchers have a) career-high single season IP totals way higher than 142.1 IP and b) a longer track record of being a starter than a reliever.
Martinez, for all his perks, doesn’t have either of those, making the likelihood of him accepting Cincinnati’s QO quite good. Jon Heyman of the New York Post is even reporting that Martinez ‘is expected’ to accept it, a move that would both lock-in his highest ever single-season salary and bump Cincinnati’s payroll – after including their option buyouts from earlier this offseason – to just over $90 million for 2025 already.
While that’s a big financial burden for the spendthrift Reds, it’s probably exactly what they wanted to happen when they doled out this QO. Without the draft pick compensation tied to him that comes with declining the QO, Martinez’s free agent market would’ve been a lot more robust, meaning perhaps the best way to make sticking around with the Reds for 2025 look better to Nick was to make him less attractive as a signee to everyone else – even if that means he ends up coming back to the Reds on a deal that pays him a handful of million bucks more this year than the Reds would prefer.
