Since the fall of the Steroid Era, Major League Baseball has spent most of its time losing ground in public relations, to the point that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Baseball can't get out of its own way because baseball can't get out of its own way.
Last year, the negotiations between the league and the union were fairly contentious, but it's not like anybody could have expected them to be easy. A modern baseball season had never been conducted under these circumstances, and unlike the NHL and NBA, which could run out their postseasons in bubbles, MLB had to actually plan out a regular season involving all 30 teams. MLB has far more extensive real estate needs. The MLBPA is a stronger union than its equivalent in the other leagues. It should have been messy and convoluted. The NFL and college sports are showing what worse looks like.
Sure enough, Sports Illustrated revisited the idea of Major League Baseball's mostly successful season for lessons that could be applied to the NHL and NBA, which actually have regular seasons to conduct this time around. Stephanie Apstein praised baseball for its willingness to adapt on the fly -- tightening up its testing turnarounds, shutting down teams and rescheduling games, shortening doubleheaders to seven innings, changing mandates as the league learned what habits caused issues.
But there's a major factor that gave baseball an edge over every other sport giving it a shot: It's a low-contact outdoor sport with plenty of social distancing built in, played during the best weather of the year. Justin Turner's positive test during Game 6 of the World Series proved the league's stance of "no November games" correct, while the union was correct that the season could have been started earlier to get in more games. The two parties tangled, and in the end, they created a manageable system that they managed to manage.
Anyway, we're probably going to see this same news cycle repeat next year, as Jayson Stark summed up the battlegrounds between the league and union in starting the 2021 season. Again, there will be conflict. Again, it will be treated as a major shame instead of something largely unavoidable, even though the NBA could be glowing and pulsating as an example that less friction isn't always better.
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The White Sox were expected to land one high-profile Cuban outfielder in their next round of international signings on Jan. 15. It's just that most people expected Oscar Luis Colás, when instead it's going to be Yoelqui Céspedes.
That said, it sounds like Colás can't be entirely ruled out, even if he was declared eligible for signing during the next international period on Tuesday. ESPN's Kiley McDaniel joined Baseball America's Ben Badler in supporting the idea that Colás could still wait until January 2022, and identifies the White Sox as potential suitors still.
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Whenever the 2021 season is allowed to start, Eno Sarris rounded up the most likely rebound cases from 2020 for an article at The Athletic. Adam Eaton is on there, which is both good news (he's supposed to bounce back) and bad news (he's coming off a terrible season from which to bounce back).
In fact, he might end up in one of the largest slingshots, with only J.D. Martinez projected to recover more lost ground. Martinez went from an extrapolated -2.5 WAR over 600 plate appearances in 2020, to 1.9 WAR over the same amount of PAs in 2021. Eaton is a bit lower on each end -- -1.7 and 1.6 -- for a second-highest difference of 3.3 WAR.
But that isn't automatically great news for either player, either. For one, 1.6 WAR is still a below-average season. Also, Eaton and Martinez are 32 and 33, which is around the age that projected rebounds become markedly less reliable.
Meanwhile, one spot below Eaton is Joc Pederson, who is expected to improve by 3.2 WAR year over year. He's going from -0.4 WAR to a projection of 2.7 WAR. He'll turn 29 in April.
(Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire)
