Breaking: Pivetta Declines Offer; Brelow’s Statement Sends Shockwaves

What initially seemed like a long shot officially turned into a formality this afternoon when Chris Cotillo broke the news that Nick Pivetta declined his qualifying offer from the Red Sox.

With this rejection of the one-year, $21 million offer, Pivetta is now a free agent. In return, the Red Sox will get a compensatory selection at the end of the second round of the 2025 MLB draft. (The last time they got a compensatory draft selection at the end of the second round was in 2022 after this same process played out with Eduardo Rodriguez, and they turned it into Roman Anthony.)

This in itself is great news for Sox fans, but when placed in boarder context, it gets even better thanks to two other potentially enormous ramifications:

1) Craig Breslow has a good handle on the market.

2) The Red Sox are likely about to invest in a top of the rotation arm.

The first is undeniable. The second is adamantly speculation, but speculation tends to lead you to the goods when you’re tracking how money and assets are being handled.

To get there, let’s back up a couple of weeks and run through the process. Below is a question from our Red Sox approval poll that inquired about how you, dear reader, felt about the decision to extend Pivetta the qualifying offer:

Opinion among our community was split, and I’m sure if we polled even deeper, there would have been addition factions within the main two options.

Once the offer was made however, three general possible scenarios were in play that still hold water (although I think now only one does):

A) The Red Sox wanted Pivetta back, hoped he’d take the offer, and ended up with a draft pick instead. (This seems highly unlikely.)

B) The Red Sox were unsure if Pivetta would accept the offer, but were willing to play games because they wanted to fish for a draft pick. (Many people probably still feel this is the case, but I’m not so sure for reasons I’ll detail below.)

C) The Red Sox were confident Pivetta wouldn’t accept the offer, and made it because it was an easy value add in a winter where they will likely be signing free agents who will cost them draft picks. (This is probably closer to the bone.)