Dansby Swanson rejects qualifying offer and is now a free agent

The elephant in the room when it comes to the Atlanta Braves offseason is whether Dansby Swanson is going to return. If the negotiations were going to be easy, the contract would have already been done well before now. It became even more clear that Dansby’s future with the Braves was in doubt when the Braves extended him the qualifying offer last week.

Sure, there have been plenty of conspiracy theorists out there that talked about “maybe Dansby will accept the QO and extend after that” or “he’ll sign the QO so that he can hit the market without it next year”. The problem there is that the free agents that do those sorts of things aren’t the premium ones…they are the borderline QO case with flaws that they need time to build more value. Dansby is a top 5-6 free agent in this class at a premium position. He wasn’t ever going to sign the qualifying offer and today confirmed that, although that doesn’t mean that he isn’t coming back to the Braves.

Dansby Swanson is now a free agent

So where to the Atlanta Braves and Dansby Swanson go from here. Well, for starters, the Braves are going to need a shortstop and until Dansby does sign elsewhere, the team is almost certainly going to keep negotiating with him to try to bring him back into the fold. The recent reporting of the Braves entertaining ideas like Orlando Arcia and Vaughn Grissom at short next season…leave something to be desired.

As for Dansby, he now gets to test the free agent market with a slight catch. Any team that signs him with lose at least one draft pick (here is a quick explanation of which picks for which teams and why) with the notable exception of the Braves as they can bring him back without draft pick penalty. For the Braves, he Dansby does end up signing elsewhere, they will get a draft pick right after the second round of the 2022 MLB Draft.