Dodgers lose Walker Buehler to hated AL rival in qualifying offer gaffe

After the Dodgers declined to extend Walker Buehler a qualifying offer, it seemed like the writing was on the wall for his departure from LA in free agency. Although Ken Rosenthal reported that the team didn't want to hurt his market value and force his hand to take another year in LA, and Brandon Gomes said at GM Meetings that the Dodgers were engaged in discussions with him about a potential return, most Buehler-centric rumors after that point steered him away from the Dodgers.

Some fans were desperate to see Buehler return after his performance in the World Series, but his regular season performance just wasn't good enough for the Dodgers to try to accommodate him on in an already crowded rotation.

Rumors attached him to the Yankees, Mets, Cubs, the Red Sox, and even the Tigers and Athletics. Only two of those teams — the Yankees and Red Sox — stand out as being particularly bad spots (for Dodgers fans) for Buehler to land, and so of course, he had to choose one of them.

On Monday morning, Buehler agreed to a one-year, $21.05 million deal — the exact value of this year's qualifying offer — with the Red Sox. The deal is pending a physical, and includes $2.5 million in performance bonuses.

Walker Buehler leaves Dodgers to sign with Red Sox for one year, $21.05 million

The Dodgers have burned the Red Sox multiple times in free agency, most notably with Teoscar Hernández last offseason, and Boston's roster has, at times, been full of players who've made it very clear that they'd rather be in LA (Justin Turner, Kenley Jansen, Kiké Hernández), so the Red Sox are flipping the script when it comes to Buehler.

The specificity of the money attached to Buehler's offer is telling. Although Buehler was widely expected to make just somewhere between $11-15 million over one year with a new contract, clearly both the Dodgers and the insiders who made the predictions totally underestimated what other clubs might see in him. He's still a Rookie of the Year finalist in 2018, a two-time All-Star, and a two-time Cy Young votes recipient, and while the Red Sox might still be taking a bit of a gamble here based on his regular season numbers in 2024, it's a decent bet.

By not taking a chance and extending the QO to Buehler, this also means that the Dodgers won't get a compensation draft pick because he's signed elsewhere, and fans will have to watch a homegrown player pitch for a team that LA is so used to dunking on. This one's a lose-lose for the Dodgers.