Hoyer: MLB would ‘benefit’ from earlier hot stove season originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Basketball’s hot stove stole the spotlight from baseball this December.
The calendar shift, due to the coronavirus pandemic, condensed the NBA’s offseason into two short months and sent MLB’s activity limping along to the beat of uncertainty. The headlining transactions this winter have included extensions for LeBron James and Paul George, a frightening amount of depth added to the reigning champion Lakers, and a dismantling of the Thunder’s roster.
Those aren’t names we’re used to hearing rumors about this time of year. And baseball’s offseason trends are partly to blame. If this shift had happened even just a decade ago, MLB’s hot stove could have competed for attention.
“I think everyone would benefit if things happen earlier, happened closer to the start of the offseason,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Thursday. “And the other sports, probably because they have hard caps, those things happen.”
Hoyer was speaking at his end-of-Winter Meetings press conference, after a week of barely any transactions from his club.
Although Major League Baseball has a luxury tax, the MLB Players Association has fought long and hard against a salary cap. So, don’t expect that to change anytime soon. But with true hot stove season trending closer and closer to Spring Training, the league could move up some of its offseason deadlines to combat that movement.
Cubs MLBPA representative Ian Happ is going through arbitration for the first time this season, as he discussed on his podcast, The Compound, last month.
“Because they don’t do arbitration until January, teams not having cost certainty pushes free agency into January, February,” Happ said. “Which makes no sense. Arbitration should be at the beginning of the offseason so that teams know what their cost is, and they can go from there, and it would speed up free agency.”
Gone are the days when free agency was mostly finished by late December. This year, with several teams operating budgets that are tight, and in some cases not yet set, the biggest free agent names are still out there: Trevor Bauer, George Springer, DJ LeMahieu, etc.. Plus, a surge of non-tendered players, including former Cubs outfielder Kyle Schwarber, flooded the market at the beginning of the month.
Uncertainty surrounding possible rule changes and the timing of the season could further affect the timing of free agency this year.
“If the season gets pushed back, then, yes, I think the hot stove season will get pushed back as well,” Hoyer said Thursday on the Cubs Talk Podcast, “because people will wait for additional information, which is just the smart thing to do.”
It’s too late, and too much is up in the air, to shift deadlines this winter. Offseason movement seems destined to crawl along at a snail’s pace. But as Major League Baseball focusses on expanding its audience, it should examine more than just it on-field product.
MLB’s hot-stove season could use pace-of-play regulations too.
