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This could arguably be one of the busiest offseasons ever. Dodgers free agents as of right now: Danny Duffy, Cole Hamels, Kenley Jansen, Clayton Kershaw, Corey Knebel, Jimmy Nelson, Albert Pujols, Corey Seager, Max Scherzer, Steve Souza Jr. and Chris Taylor.
Many Dodger fans are wondering what will happen with Clayton Kershaw this offseason after the Dodgers did not extend him the qualifying offer this weekend. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman explained the team did not extend the one-year pact to Kershaw so as to respect his wishes with taking a deliberate approach in free agency.
“I think we’ve made it very clear that if Kersh wants to come back he will always have a spot with what he’s meant to this organization – not only looking back but what we think he can do for us next year,” Friedman said Tuesday. “I know he wants to take a little time with Ellen and figure out what’s best for them and also more importantly get to a point where he feels good health-wise. We have no reason to believe he won’t.
“But in his mind, he wants to get to the point where he feels good from a health standpoint and go from there. This (a qualifying offer) would have accelerated the timeline in a way that he wasn’t ready for. With our respect for him and what he’s done for this organization, that wasn’t something that we wanted to do and put him on that kind of clock when he wasn’t ready for it.”
Kershaw this season had a 3.55 ERA in 121.2 innings of work with a 3.4 WAR.
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