SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — There is some drama right out of the gate in this Phillies offseason.
Will Jeremy Hellickson take the money?
Or will he roll the dice and seek the long-term contract that he’d like to have?
Start the countdown. Hellickson has seven days to make up his mind.
As long expected, the Phillies extended a qualifying offer to the free-agent pitcher before Monday’s deadline, general manager Matt Klentak said upon arriving at baseball’s annual GM meetings on Monday.
Hellickson has seven days to accept or reject the offer of $17.2 million for the 2017 season. If he accepts it, he becomes a signed player for 2017. If he rejects it, the Phillies will receive draft-pick compensation when the pitcher signs with another club. That pick figures to be somewhere between 25 and 30 in the June draft, so it would be extremely valuable to a rebuilding club.
Klentak has frequently said he’d be happy with either outcome. He likes the idea of having a veteran pitcher on his young starting staff — that’s why he traded for Hellickson a year ago — but also knows the impact that another high draft pick and an extra $2 million, give or take, in signing bonus pool money could have on the team’s future.
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“Both are valuable,” Klentak said in September. “For the same reason Jeremy Hellickson was valuable to us this year, Jeremy Hellickson or a player like that could be valuable to us again next year. The draft pick at the end of the first round has a real, measurable, tangible value.”
Hellickson, who will turn 30 in April, went 12-10 with a 3.71 ERA in 32 starts (189 innings) for the Phillies in 2016. He made $7 million.
After his last start with the club, Hellickson talked about how much he enjoyed pitching for the Phillies. He was asked whether he could envision himself accepting a qualifying offer from the Phillies and returning to the club on a one-year deal.
“Yeah, I mean, I definitely could see it,” he said. “But …"
Hellickson paused. Then a reporter broke the silence by suggesting the pitcher would rather get a multi-year deal on the open market.
“Yeah, I would love that actually a little bit more,” he said.
Hellickson’s representative, Scott Boras, is at these GM meetings and will spend the next few days gauging whether or not he can land the multi-year deal his client would like to have. The free-agent market for pitchers is weak, so that favors Hellickson. Some industry insiders rank him as the second-best starter on the market behind lefty Rich Hill.
Receiving a qualifying offer can limit a player’s market because the signing club loses a high draft pick. Nonetheless, entering this offseason, 54 players had been extended qualifying offers under this system, which began in 2012, and all but three rejected.