Reese Kaplan -- What Will 2021 Season Be Like?

Let’s assume for a moment that there will be no baseball in 2020.  Blame the players.  Blame the owners.  Blame the virus.  Take your pick.  It seems too often it’s one step forward and two steps backward.  Now the spring training facilities are all being sanitized to help prevent the spread of virus among seemingly healthy ballplayers as the Phillies, Blue Jays and others found out this weekend.  Mack has said he’s done with baseball this year and many of us are beginning to fall onto that side of the spectrum as well.  

Assuming that no abbreviated season actually takes place, it’s going to create some havoc when you think about reshaping your roster for 2021.  After all, if things progressed as what used to pass for normal, there would be free agency, young or reserve players demonstrating what they can do when given the chance as aging or ineffective starters mended, and folks playing for big, new contracts.  If none of that takes place then the league is going to have to think a bit about what is fair to all concerned.

First of all, the players are receiving some compensation without playing games.  As much as we hate to give the owners some kudos, that is certainly a good gesture on their part instead of flat out denying all wages since they are not receiving performance for the salaries they’re paying.  Of course, these accolades only belong to the major league players.  The minor league brethren are being told to go get a real job because there are clubs out there who have publicly announced it is shutting down payroll for that segment of the team.

The players are also to be considered as well.  They are not the ones shutting down the game through labor strife or other actions that cause people to seethe.  The suspension of the 2020 season is done as a result of a health crisis that no one has fully learned how to manage in this country yet, though headlines abound about other places in the world in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere that that percentage of infections and deaths have been markedly lower. 

So if you’re the Mets and there is no season, what do you take away from the situation to prepare for the next full-season team to take the field in 2021?  I think you’d have to assume that contracts are what they are and that means that pending free agents will be granted their freedom as scheduled, though it will be a bit tough on the best of the lot to get what they’re worth without having demonstrated what they can still do.  

Similarly, I would expect that owners are going to be somewhat more conservative in their offers than they have been in the past due to the lack of revenue for the 2020 season.  If you are a marginal free agent not in the top tier (a Juan Lagares, for example), then finding work is going to be a much tougher struggle than it’s been in the past.  You can’t very well hang out in the minor leagues as teams often did with mediocre veterans in the past as they have eliminated multiple teams and now need to find places to play the younger ones still working their way up the ladder to the big leagues.  

What that might mean to the Wilpons (assuming they are still the owners of the ballclub) is that there will be a lot more competition for the Tier 3 free agents as other clubs will try to find value at that level rather than plunking all their money down on a long term commitment to someone much more expensive.  The Mets have eschewed the top of the free agent class for quite some time with the exception of twice bidding against themselves for the oft-injured Yoenis Cespedes.  Now other clubs might see that sometimes you pick up the sub-$10 million ballplayers and they deliver over 1.5 WAR which ranks them as a good investment.  

I’m also curious to see what happens to the independent leagues which heretofore have been more of a novelty than anything else.  Now they may become the minor leagues for veteran ballplayers who can’t land a contract on a starting MLB club.  I would expect to see quite a few more players there -- not just the Player of the Year Jordany Valdespin types, but actual competent major leaguers ready to be called up to an MLB roster at a moment’s notice without costing the owners a single penny in the interim.  

The silver lining to all of this missed time and havoc may be a renewed interest of building from within.  The Mets have been notorious since the days of Doc Gooden and later Jenrry Mejia about not promoting young ballplayers to the big club when it was more customary to wait until they’d hit 24 years of age or older.  The faster path to the majors with fewer clubs may mean younger players getting opportunities sooner.  Let’s not forget that internal promotions are WAY cheaper than external signings, so that aspect of roster construction must be factored in as well.

While we are not sure what the 2020 season will look like in the books, we do fully expect life as we’ve known it for 2021.  There will be players changing teams, players making the clubs out of spring training and players out on the street hoping to hang on with a minor league team or independent venue. 

What we will see prior to the end of the current collective bargaining agreement is new found padlocks on owners’ wallets having had books in the red for 2020.  That’s not good and will likely fuel the acrimony as the powers that be try to hammer out a new agreement before the 2022 season begins.  The addition of the NL Designated Hitter and the various scheduling options will only add kerosene to the fire.  That’s never a good thing.