It’s a brand new game after 60-game season
J.D.Martinez isn’t really as bad as he was in 2020. Or so we’ll find out this summer. Entering the 2021 MLB season, one of the biggest storylines will be learning just how much stock the 60-game pandemic-altered season was actually worth.
There were plenty of reasons to doubt what we were seeing as worth reading into for the future, and for players like Martinez, a new rule changed everything.
Major League Baseball probably overreacted to the sign-stealing scandals while restricting players from accessing in-game video, something that had been part of the game for decades.
Little by little, players started making their complaints heard. At first it seemed a little tacky. Were big league millionaires really whining that they couldn’t analyze their performance until after the game?
But as more and more players became vocal about it, there seemed to be a legitimate case that offensive results in 2020 weren’t totally representative of a player’s true value.
“They should at least have asked us what we think about it,” Twins masher Nelson Cruz told The Athletic last season. “It feels like we’re in Triple-A or the minors.”
For Cruz, it didn’t matter. He hit .303 with a .992 OPS and 16 homers.
For others, like Martinez, it did. He hit .213 with a .680 OPS and seven homers.
“It definitely hurt me a bit,” Martinez said this spring. “Obviously I had to change my routine to something I wasn’t used to. It’s something I grew up with in the minors. Like I’ve said a million times, it’s part of a routine, and it’s something that kind of just got taken away from me.
“I’m excited that this year we’re going to have it back in a sense.”
All four winners of the two leagues’ major awards (MVPs Jose Abreu and Freddie Freeman, and Cy Youngs Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer) were first-time winners, just the second time in the last five years that’s happened.
There was the weirdness of the COVID-19 protocols and the fear of the deadly pandemic that was on its way toward killing more than a half-million Americans, and counting. Several of the game’s top players opted out, including a few who called it quits after the season had already started. Many players who chose to participate couldn’t see their families.
There was the oddity of the regional schedule, with American League teams playing National League teams with unusual regularity and normal divisions being reset.
There were new rules, with a designated hitter in the National League, a three-batter minimum, expanded rosters, expanded playoffs, seven-inning doubleheaders and a man on second base to start extra innings.
All this made the difficulty in judging a small sample size of just 60 games even more treacherous.
Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts said of Martinez, “I think that’s definitely one of the reasons that he didn’t perform to the level that we all know that he does, and he’s capable of. But I know for a fact that this year he is gonna bounce back in a big way… He would have been my MVP pick — I said it last year – but it’s kind of tough for a
DH to win. So if he plays the outfield a little bit more, I’ll stick with my pick.”
Entering 2021, MLB announced there will be in-game video once again, but with a twist.
Players will have to wait until the end of the half-inning to access it. And instead of going into the tunnel, they’ll have to watch video in the dugout on MLB-approved iPads. The video footage will be edited so that catchers’ signs won’t be viewable.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” White Sox manager Tony La Russa told the Associated Press.
It’s a young man’s game — or is it?
The narrative across baseball is that 2020 once again proved it’s skewing younger. But that may not be the case.
There’s only two parts of the game that consistently produces better results for younger players: speed and defense.
When it comes to pitching and hitting, the game’s youngest players performed just as well as the game’s oldest in 2020.
Take a look: there were 142 position players who qualified for the batting title last year. Of the 20 youngest players, 14 of them had an OPS higher than the MLB average of .740. Roughly the same number, 15 of the 20 oldest players, also finished above .740. On the pitching side, there were similar results. There were 42 pitchers to qualify for an ERA title. Of the nine youngest, eight of them had an ERA under the MLB average of 4.45. Of the nine oldest, there were also eight below the league average.
The only noticeable difference came in overall position player WAR, where defense and speed are also considered. Thirteen of the 20 youngest position players had a WAR of 1.0 or higher, while just seven of the 20 oldest players hit that mark. The two World Series teams, the Dodgers and Rays, both had rosters that fell into the middle third in MLB’s average ages, perhaps debunking the myth that youth is taking over baseball.