Dexter Fowler’s deal with the Chicago Cubs is a pricey bet on himself and is moxie to be admired. Fowler walked away from $35 million offered by the Baltimore Orioles to play one year for the Cubs for $13 million -- $8 million in salary, with another $5 million tacked on after the season after Fowler presumably rejects a team option for 2017.

This way, Fowler has the option of going back into a free-agent market next fall that will be much more thin than this year’s high-volume, high-quality group that included Jason Heyward, Alex Gordon and many others. The best free-agent outfielders next fall might include Yoenis Cespedes (who has an opt-out in his deal with the Mets), Carlos Gomez, Matt Holliday, Cameron Maybin, Jay Bruce and others. There’s a chance that Fowler, who turns 30 next month, could be No. 1 or No. 2 in the pecking order of outfielders in the market.

But his choice to return to the Cubs also bears a good measure of risk for Fowler, whose camp already has lost about $3 million misreading the saturated outfield market, when it turned down a $15.8 million qualifying offer from the Cubs last fall and then waited through a long winter before returning to Chicago for less money.