McAdam: Baseball's cold, cold economic winter has already arrived

The 2020-21 MLB off-season is, technically, less than two days old and already, we're seeing how dramatically different it's going to be.

It was widely assumed the financial losses felt by franchises thanks to the pandemic-shortened season, the absence of fans in ballparks and the uncertainty about what lies ahead would send a chilling effect across the game this winter.

Budgets would be reduced, if not slashed. Teams would think long and hard about committing to new expenditures.

But in the first week, a handful of moves have signaled that we may have grossly underestimated what's ahead.

Now, we're getting some clues: Austere. Harsh.

The first hints were demonstrated by the St. Louis Cardinals, who declined a $12.5 million 2021 option for infielder Kolten Wong. It wasn't long ago that picking up such an option would have been a proverbial no-brainer. Only last year, Wong had 24 stolen bases, 11 homers, a .784 OPS and a Gold Glove.

Now, he's a free agent.

"It’s really difficult to plan when you have a lot of uncertainties,” Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told reporters. “Right now we don’t know what our revenues are going to look like. We don’t understand what attendance will look like next year. Candidly we don’t even know exactly what rules might be next year. … This is about mitigating cost as best we can until we have a sense of where we’re going.”

It continued on Thursday with the news that the Cleveland Indians had placed reliever Brad Hand on outright waivers rather than pick up Hand's 2021 option of $10 million. Hand led all major league relievers with 16 saves in 2020 and posted a tidy 2.05 and a 0.733 WHIP.

Cleveland's move means any team can obtain Hand (and his contractual obligations) with a simple waiver claim and without having to sacrifice any players in return. The Red Sox, by virtue of their 24-36 record, would have the third shot at claiming Hand should both Texas (22-38) and Detroit (23-35) pass.

(Players on waivers are available to teams within their own league in reverse order of the previous year's standings. Should a player go unclaimed within his own league, he would then go through the same process in the other league).

But while the Red Sox could surely use someone of Hand's stature to fill their closer role, it seems highly unlikely that they will.

In part, that's because there is growing speculation that the Sox are about to -- if they haven't already -- pass on an option of their own. Lefty Martin Perez, who would be due $6.25 million in 2021, may have his own option declined. The Red Sox could then try to negotiate a deal for a lesser guaranteed salary with Perez, who enjoyed his season in Boston.

But given the current economic climate in the game, the Red Sox seemed to have made the determination that everything is subject to review, and that $6.25 million is too steep for someone who posted a 4.50 ERA. Presumably, they'll know soon enough whether that was a smart play.

And the list of available players flooding the free-agent market has only just begun. This week, players who have their options declined will join the list. But the real influx will come in another month when teams make some tough calls on arbitration-eligible players.

Nothing contributes to salary inflation faster than the prospect of arbitration, a process that can double or triple a player's base salary from one year to the next, depending on service time and performance. And again, teams will be applying new standards here in deciding whether a player is worth that kind of year-over-year bump. In past years, a $3 or $4 million increase would be shrugged off, chalked up to the price of doing business.

Now? It might be further added to the financial losses already piling up.

And, of course, injecting another dozen, two dozen players into an already chilled free-agent market will only depress salaries further.

For the team willing to absorb some short-term losses, the opportunity exists to scoop up some premium talent at below-market value. Often, whether it's a claim of a player on waivers, the term will only be a year. This is not about inheriting a long-term albatross, like absorbing Miguel Cabrera's remaining $102 million over the next three years.

Will the Sox be in position to pounce on some of these opportunities and speed up their rebuilding process? Or, like others facing the prospect of either declining or non-existent revenue, will they steer away from taking on additional debt.

Either way, it's been made abundantly clear: if you thought the last two winters resulted in a drag on free agent interest and offers, buckle up. Early indications are that those two free-agent classes were nothing compared to what's about to take place.