Photo Credit: Sean Winters/Flickr
It’s not often that baseball steals the spotlight from the NFL in January, but they’d probably give it back if they could.
This is typically a quiet month for MLB teams, as they do the final tinkering around the edges of their rosters and organizations before pitchers and catchers report to Florida and Arizona in February. This year, however, fallout from sign-stealing scandals has made a significant impact late in the winter and altered the conversation around the game.
Spring training is about three weeks away, but three prominent MLB teams are looking for new managers this week after A.J. Hinch of the Astros, Alex Cora of the Red Sox and recently hired skipper Carlos Beltrán of the Mets resigned or were removed from their posts in light of their roles in electronic sign-stealing schemes. Two of the last three World Series champions have been implicated in the discussions, which aren’t going away anytime soon.
At least, all of this has distracted from another frequent offseason baseball topic, as the phrase “pace of play” hasn’t come up in months. The average nine inning MLB game required three hours and five minutes to complete in 2019, tied for the longest in MLB history and 15 minutes longer than the same game in 2010. This happened despite recent rule changes limiting mound visits, shortening inning breaks, eliminating the pitches in intentional walks and more.
Despite some pushback, MLB is still expected to implement two new rules for 2020 that could impact this situation: Requiring all pitchers to face a minimum of three batters before leaving the game could reduce the number of in-game pitching changes, and new September roster limits could lower the number of marathon late-season games where both managers empty their benches and bullpens. This would normally be a hot topic during the leadup to a new MLB season, but sign-stealing controversies have overshadowed it in recent weeks.
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Sign stealing has also drawn some attention away from the game’s ongoing economic conversation. The free agent market has been significantly more active this winter than in either of the last two years, and the top players moving have been distributed beyond the usual big spenders: The Angels, Twins, Diamondbacks, White Sox and Blue Jays have all added a player MLB Trade Rumors listed among the offseason’s top 10 free agents.
Even with all that spending, however, around one-third of all MLB teams will enter the 2020 season with virtually no chance of contending. Many of those teams have been “have nots” for a long time and could remain for a while longer. Four MLB teams lost over 100 games in 2019, and all of them could repeat that dubious feat in 2020 as the Orioles, Royals, Tigers and Marlins have done little to improve upon teams that were historically bad a year ago. For Baltimore and Kansas City, it would be their third consecutive 100-loss campaigns, something only two other teams have done this century. The Royals already own one such streak, having done it from 2004-2006.
While the sign-stealing scandal has taken some attention away from baseball’s other problems, it will likely also leave a legacy longer than either of those issues. As was the case during baseball’s “Steroid Era” in the late ’90s and early 2000s, the suspicion of improper activity will likely loom over breakout seasons or team turnarounds in the years to come, too. Fans and pundits alike will argue about the legitimacy of past and future accomplishments in light of what we’ve recently learned, drawing attention away from the game on the field and casting doubt on its top performers.
In the end, MLB likely wishes all of this could have been kept quiet and fans would have spent January discussing the Super Bowl.
