BN: Trent Grisham ACCEPTS Qualifying Offer

Breaking News: Trent Grisham has accepted the Yankees 2026 Qualifying Offer at $22 Million. Wow! Tweets inside...

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Quick Thoughts:

If you want a super quick thought, look at the article photo again:

If you want another super quick thought, I'm also having trouble embedding tweets into this article. (That's a bad omen.)

For the tweets I would've included, they all say the same thing: Trent Grisham is back, as being reported by the MLB (Mark Feinsand) and ESPN (Jeff Passan).

Bryan Hoch is also tweeting that this move is not stopping the Yankees from pursuing Cody Bellinger as a potential return candidate. (Tweet here.) If that's the case, I'll warn Yankees fans now to be prepared for them to trot out the exact same team- or close to it- again next year.

Across the MLB, thirteen qualifying offers were made available. Four players accepted (Grisham, Gleyber Torres, Shota Imanaga, Brandon Woodruff). In the history of qualifying offers, only fourteen players ever accepted the offers out of 144 that were made available. (Info from Mark Feinsand).

As the MLB and MLBPA prepare for a potential lockout ahead of the 2027 season, having multiple players accepting qualifying offers is a very interesting sign of things to come. This is not a normal thing to have happen, and is something to keep an eye on for baseball fans across the board.

As far as the Yankees are concerned, this is not what they probably wanted. Trent Grisham is coming off a career year, and even that statement is underselling the point. Trent Grisham was a throw-in piece in the Juan Soto deal. He was an afterthought. Now, he's a $20+ million dollar player after playing out of his mind for one year.

Thankfully, this is only a one year deal, but even so I don't think it should be expected that Trent Grisham will live up to the price tag. Especially not as a hitter. As a fielder? Maybe, and I'll even verge onto saying probably. Trent Grisham is a good-to-great center fielder. Trent Grisham is not a consistent 125 OPS+ hitter, regardless of how his 2025 season stats came out.

I said it a few days ago in the breaking news article about Ryan Yarbrough (who ended up signing for $2.5 Million): If this deal prevents the Yankees from going out and spending, it doesn't matter how good the player is, this was a bad move. For Yarbrough, my worry is that his move will be a temporary move that turns permanent when the Yankees "just miss out" on better starting pitching talent on the free agent or trade market.

For Grisham, I have the same worry.

On one hand, there was no better center fielder available on the open market. That, and the fact that this will only be for one year, are the only positives that I can take out of this move in the current moment.

On the other hand, going into 2025, Grisham was a career 94 OPS+ hitter. After 2025, he's a career 101 OPS+ hitter. Not that much has even changed.

Prove me wrong, Trent.

I hope to eat my words on this one.