Just read Jayson Stark's big ass article about the qualifying offer system fucking over Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales and how it fucked over Kyle Lohse and Michael Bourn last year.
I agree to an extent, but I also agree that once players start accepting the QO, it'll make teams more weary. Especially Scott Boras clients. I remember back after 2002, the Braves were under order from AOL Time Warner to start cutting payroll. They were going to let Greg Maddux go in free agency and assumed he was going elsewhere (especially since he was a Boras guy) so they offered him arbitration. He shocked them and accepted it, forcing them to pay him about $13 million in 2003. Then Rafael Soriano, another Boras guy, shocked them again by accepting arbitration after 2009 after they had already signed Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito. Oopz.