Courtesy of Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club
For the Dodgers and Rays, the next week is about chasing a World Series. For the Brewers and 27 other teams, however, it’s one week to make final preparations for what’s likely to be an unpredictable offseason.
To some extent, for a baseball executive to have a successful offseason they need to be able to predict the future. Identifying players who will break out or bounce back is one thing, however, and predicting what the baseball world will look like in April of 2021 is entirely another.
After a rocky start, the 2020 MLB season was largely more successful than all but the most optimistic would have predicted. Once the Marlins and Cardinals got past their respective COVID outbreaks the season was played nearly without incident, providing significant evidence that the sport’s virus protocols were sufficient to keep players, coaches and traveling parties safe for an extended period of time. At this point it seems more likely than ever that teams will be able to open the 2021 season next April with the goal of returning to a full slate of games and a normal schedule. The baseball economics that await them, however, are much more uncertain.
Baseball achieved a surprising milestone last week when the NLCS games between the Braves and Dodgers became the first contests played all season with fans in the stands. Eager to regain that revenue stream, MLB has been conducting polling recently in an effort to determine what it will take for fans to feel comfortable coming to games in 2021. Their ability to partially or fully implement those recommendations, however, depends almost entirely on virus numbers and local authorities’ willingness to allow mass gatherings.
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Income Remains Uncertain
That’s going to create an offseason where it will be difficult at best for teams to accurately predict their income going forward. While local and national TV revenue should remain steady, tickets and other in-stadium earnings are uncertain. There could be a wide variance in teams’ willingness to invest in player payroll during unclear financial times, with some teams looking to slash salaries while others take advantage of a newfound window to “go for it.” As a result, the gap between baseball’s haves and have-nots in 2021 might be larger than any time in recent memory.
Meanwhile, players signing new contracts for 2021 will also need to consider some things they’ve never had to take into account before, not the least of which is the concept of “guaranteed” money. Among the unprecedented things that happened this year was a very sudden change in players’ expected income as an abbreviated season altered contracts that had previously been seen as a given. It’s been known for years, for example, that Ryan Braun was scheduled to earn $16 million in 2020. Instead, he made just under $6 million in pro-rated salary for the 60-game season.
Before this season it would have been virtually unheard of for teams to miss payments on “guaranteed” contracts, but it happened this season across the game. It’s a factor this winter’s free agents may want written into their new deals, providing some level of salary certainty that’s comparable to what they’ve previously had.
Similarly, until 2020 players could have taken for granted that their families would be able to attend their games in person. That all changed when this season’s contests were largely played in empty ballparks, however. For many players this could be a key point of negotiation in their new contracts, assuring that their loved ones will have an opportunity to safely attend their games even if stadiums remain closed to the general public.
Even with those concessions, however, this might be the winter where some of the sport’s veteran stars decide to move on. The game’s COVID protocols removed many of the perks from the experience of being an MLB player, and may leave some players doing some soul-searching this winter to determine if they want to come back for another year. Ryan Braun is one of those players, and he cited both the desire to spend more time with family and the uncertainty of what the world will look like in 2021 as factors in his decision to retire this winter or return for his 15th MLB season.
Every year at this time players and teams face questions entering the offseason. This year those questions are bigger than ever, however, and they could lead to a tumultuous winter.
To read more Brewers On Deck Circle columns by Kyle Lobner, click here.
