CARLSBAD, Calif. – These are still procedural days in the baseball off-season and Marcus Semien’s early rejection of the Toronto Blue Jays’ $18.4-million qualifying offer needs to be viewed as him checking off an agenda item, rather than ruling out a return north.

Players extended a qualifying offer have until Nov. 17 to decide if they want to accept and often they wait until the deadline to gather as much information as possible before making a call.

But the MVP finalist was always going to turn down the one-year deal, understanding that he’s clearly going to beat the offer on the open market, while the Blue Jays knew Semien wouldn’t accept and understand Robbie Ray will do the same in due course.

More noteworthy than the decisions themselves, however, is the way the week is unfolding for Semien, his agent, and a Blue Jays team expected to spend.

First, Semien is one of four players known to already reject the QO, along with Corey Seager, Michael Conforto and Nick Castellanos and the common thread between them is that they’re all represented by powerful agent Scott Boras.

Making the calls just as the GM meetings begin is a very Boras flex, demonstrating his confidence in the market for each in spite of the draft pick a signing team must surrender.

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Conforto, an outfielder who makes a lot of sense for the Blue Jays, seemed like a candidate to accept the QO from the New York Mets as a one-year pillow deal. But rejecting it allows him to explore longer-term deals with other clubs, knowing he’ll surely be able to replicate the QO late in the off-season should a better market not develop.

Whether the Blue Jays have engaged with Conforto is unclear, but they have already expressed interest in pitchers and position players who received qualifying offers, according to sources. Again, that’s expected as many of the top free agents are attached to qualifying offers and the Blue Jays plan to pursue top players.

For any player thinking of accepting the qualifying offer, this week is critical for information gathering, creating some urgency in an off-season that’s otherwise expected to develop slowly. While most free agent talks can wait, teams must express interest to qualified free agents now or risk that they accept, returning to their former teams.

Beyond Semien, Seager, Conforto and Castellanos, Boras also represents Max Scherzer, Kris Bryant and Carlos Rodon, among others, giving him significant power in how this off-season develops.

By extending the qualifying offers to Semien and Ray, the Blue Jays ensured they’ll receive draft-pick compensation should the high-impact duo sign elsewhere. Should the Blue Jays sign a qualified free agent, they’d lose a pick of their own – but that hasn’t stopped them from pursuing qualified free agents before.

At the Letters

Ben Nicholson-Smith is Sportsnet’s baseball editor. Arden Zwelling is a senior writer. Together, they bring you the most in-depth Blue Jays podcast in the league, covering off all the latest news with opinion and analysis, as well as interviews with other insiders and team members.

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EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

Farhan Zaidi, the Sudbury, Ont., born, Philippines raised president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants, was selected by his peers as Major League Baseball’s executive of the year. The Tampa Bay Rays’ Erik Neander, the 2019 winner, was second followed by fellow president of baseball operations David Stearns of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Zaidi and the Giants project to be active this winter and he could end up in direct competition with the Blue Jays for several players, Marcus Semien included.

WINNING PLAYERS OVER

The last time the GM Meetings were held in person, the Blue Jays were coming off a 95-loss season. This time, they just wrapped up a 91-win year featuring two MVP finalists and the leading American League Cy Young candidate.

With that in mind, there’s internal optimism that the Blue Jays won’t have to sell themselves quite as much and that free agents will be eager to play in Toronto, just as they were following the team’s playoff appearances in 2015-16. Plus, there’s the fact that the Blue Jays now know where they’ll be playing their home games after splitting the 2021 season between three locations.

Ultimately, free agents tend to sign where the best offers are but, for what it’s worth, at least one prominent free agent is said to have approached the Blue Jays to gauge their interest. When the Blue Jays were rebuilding, those calls didn’t happen as often.

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