"One of those deadlines is coming up on Tuesday: the deadline for teams to decide whether they're going to tender guys without guaranteed contracts for 2026 or shuffle them off into free agency. This deadline is generally expressed as the non-tender deadline, focusing not on "hey we will pay you a salary as circumscribed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement" but on the guys who are told, "no, go away.""
"For most players, a non-tender is pretty simple: the team simply thinks it can do better with the roster spot. Guys making league minimum-ish that have option years generally get tendered since they don't eat up a roster spot. Guys that will make relatively low (for MLB players) arbitration-eligible salaries are also usually tendered, unless the team straight-up doesn't want them on the roster."
The non-tender deadline requires teams to decide whether to offer arbitration-eligible players guaranteed contracts for the next season or to release them into free agency. Most non-tenders are low-cost or option-year players, or those whose projected arbitration salaries exceed expected on-field value. Last year roughly 60 players were non-tendered; about 40 percent did not appear in the majors in 2025. Approximately 70 percent of non-tendered players produced zero or negative fWAR in 2025. The remaining non-tenders split between marginal positive contributors and average performers, with very few clear, high-impact pickups.
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