Dealing With Rejection (of Qualifying Offers)

For many of us, the relationships that we have with our baseball team are longer lasting, more intense, and far more faithful than the ones with have with actual human beings that we have actually touched. We love our respective teams more than we do dogs and cats, lovers, and sometimes ourselves. So, when it’s the offseason and a person on your team isn’t willing to stick around on the team that you would give a kidney for, sometimes it feels like a breakup.

Sometimes it’s for the best. A guy like Justin Turner is hot right now; the Red Panda is now an eligible bachelor and there are about thirty various teams looking to get into a relationship with him. Makes you wonder who gets his final rose. But who can blame Turner for testing the waters? Get money while you can and name your price. This might be the one and only time you get the chance.

Sometimes you take a chance and it just doesn’t work out. Ian Desmond last year was that poor fool. He trusted in his own value, but no one else saw it, and it bit him right in the butt. This year, he has to start over again. Will he stay with Texas or look for a better contract? Will he have the same problem he did when he left Washington?

Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, period. You try, but you just really don’t fit in. Last year, that was Jason Heyward with the Cardinals. The Redbirds QO’d him but he just didn’t feel like a part of that team, and went on to Chicago. He got a lot of crap for his decision from the Best Fans, but ultimately you want a guy on your team who wants to be there.

The point is, don’t take it personally when your guy leaves your team. It happens. They might come back, and they might not. Look at Greg Maddux; he left Chicago, went to Atlanta for about ten years, and then came back. Just because they say goodbye once doesn’t mean that there isn’t a plan to come back to you again. Maybe they have to leave in order to truly appreciate what was there for them all along

And if it doesn’t happen… well, you don’t need them. For every Andrelton Simmons out there, there’s a Dansby Swanson waiting in the wings. Your time will come, and maybe one day you, too, will be on the winning end of your own qualifying offer. And if not…well…do what I do and listen to Morrissey be more depressed than you are. It always makes me feel better.