I have to be honest: Since covering the NBA ceased to be part of my professional job description a couple of years ago, I have had a hard time keeping up with the league. I follow the scoreboards, peruse the stats now and again, and read the occasional piece of ESPN analysis from my old colleague Kevin Pelton. But whatever bandwidth my brain had to process sports-related information, well, that seems to have been entirely gobbled up by baseball.
That's neither a complaint nor an attempt at bragging. It's simply what is, and for me, it's kind of surprising the degree to which this has occurred. After all, I still feel passionate about the NBA, even if I can no longer find much time to indulge that passion. Maybe it has something to do with getting older. I don't know how many times I've had similar conversations with people who say something like, "I used to be able to keep track of every sport, even the ones I don't like." Perhaps that's part of it -- the inherent entropy that comes with what Henry Miller called "the ordered fatuity of responsible, adult life."
This all being the case, a strange thing happened to me a couple of days ago. I have been even more deeply immersed in baseball lately than usual, bouncing from Kansas City to Omaha, back to Chicago, then to St. Louis and Minneapolis and, once again, back to Chicago. I've written many thousands of words during this time, and while I'm physically tired, I feel like I could write thousands more. There is just so much to say.
At the same time, in my waking periphery, I have been aware of a massive turnover in the NBA. Players -- great players -- have been changing teams as if the league were starting over from scratch. Anthony Davis finally got his wish to leave the second-greatest city on the planet (No. 1 Chicago; No. 2 New Orleans) and will join LeBron James in Los Angeles. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving will be in Brooklyn. And so on ... you didn't come here for a rundown of all that.
So about that strange thing that happened: A couple of nights ago, I sat down at my computer and opened the basketball version of one of the great simulation games put out by Dave Koch Sports. I use the baseball version almost daily, to run simulations of possible trades and what-if scenarios or to play games from past decades to satisfy my historical sweet tooth. This time, however, I found myself taking the end-of-season rosters from the last NBA season and moving players around based on the latest transactions. I just wanted to see what it all looked like, even though I knew that when Kawhi Leonard chooses his next team, it will all change.
The NBA offseason unfolds at a breakneck pace of which baseball can only dream. Frankly, it's intoxicating. As paradoxically sad and exhilarated as I feel when the last out of each World Series is made, I also start to look forward to what we've long called the hot stove season, as do many others. And I believe when we do this, we kind of think of something like what happens in the NBA every summer -- the big leagues taking on a whole new shape that we can admire and analyze all through the cold months, until that magical time when pitchers and catchers report.
As we all know, that's not what the baseball offseason is like anymore, not in the least. Instead, we're left with a collective feeling of, "Geez, will this thing ever end?" Even those who are addicted to finding out the latest rumor as soon as their phone can buzz them with it have grown weary. It's as if the little boy who cried wolf never learned his lesson. The snows come. The snows melt. Eventually, the pitchers and catchers do report. Teams get in shape and begin the season. But the offseason goes on and on. This one didn't end until June.
Let's consider the two league calendars, interspersed with some key developments from each league's most recent offseasons. Those offseasons, by the way, are of exactly the same length for the two leagues. All of what follows was compiled using information and rankings from mlbtraderumors.com and hoopsrumors.com.
MLB OFFSEASON CALENDAR, 2018-19
• Oct. 28, 2018: World Series ends
• Oct. 29, 2018 (9 a.m. ET): Eligible players become free agents, but can only negotiate with current teams for five days
• Oct. 31, 2018: Contract options must be decided, unless otherwise specified in contract
• Nov. 2, 2018: Deadline for teams to tender qualifying offers to free agents
• Nov. 3, 2018: Free agency begins
>>>Nov. 7, 2018: First top-50 free agent signs (CC Sabathia)
• Nov. 12, 2018: Free agents who received qualifying offers must accept or reject it
• Nov. 20, 2018: Teams must add eligible minor leaguers to 40-man roster or expose them to Rule V draft
• Nov. 30, 2018: Deadline for teams to tender pre-arbitration-eligible and arbitration-eligible players a contract offer
>>>Dec. 1, 2018: 28 days after start of free agency, five top-50 free agents have signed
• Dec. 9-13, 2018: Winter meetings
• Dec. 13, 2018: Rule V draft
>>>Dec. 15, 2018: 42 days after start of free agency, 10 of top 50 free agents have signed
>>>Jan. 1, 2019: 59 days after start of free agency, 23 of top 50 free agents have signed
• Jan. 11, 2019: Deadline for exchanging arbitration figures
>>>Feb. 1, 2019: 90 days after start of free agency, 38 of top 50 free agents have signed
• Feb. 1-20, 2019: Arbitration hearings
• Feb. 15, 2019: Teams begin to report for spring training (109 days after end of World Series)
>>>Feb. 15, 2018: 104 days after start of free agency, 39 of top 50 free agents have signed
>>>March 1, 2019: 118 days after start of free agency, 43 of top 50 free agents have signed
• March 28, 2019: Opening Day for most clubs
>>>April 1, 2019: 149 days after start of free agency, 48 of top 50 free agents have signed
>>>May 1, 2019: 179 days after start of free agency, 48 of top 50 free agents have signed
>>>June 1, 2019: 210 days after start of free agency, 48 of top 50 free agents have signed
• June 2, 2019: Draft pick compensation requirement for free agents tendered a qualifying offer expires
• June 3, 2019: Annual amateur draft
>>>June 7, 2019: 217 days after start of free agency, last two top-50 free agents (Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel) sign
For me, the key passage is from Dec. 15: 42 days after the start of free agency, 10 of the 50 best free agents had signed. That's after the winter meetings, which in a just world would be the time when baseball reclaims its place in the national sport consciousness, if only for a few days. Instead, it has become little more than a ballroom full of sportswriters spending four days trying to stay awake.
Now let's consider the NBA calendar for the period currently in progress:
NBA OFFSEASON CALENDAR, 2019-20
• May 14, 2019: Draft lottery
• June 13, 2019: NBA Finals end
• June 20, 2019: NBA draft
• June 24, 2019: Deadline for exercising player options
• June 29, 2019: Deadline for decisions on early-termination options, unless otherwise specified by contract
• June 29, 2019: Deadline for making qualifying offers to potential restricted free agents
• June 29, 2019: Teams can begin arranging meetings with prospective free agents
• June 30, 2019: Last day of 2018-19 league year
• June 30, 2019: Last day for eligible players to sign veteran extensions
• June 30, 2019 (6 p.m. ET): 2019-20 league year begins
• June 30, 2019: Moratorium begins against transactions becoming official
• June 30, 2019: Free agents can enter verbal agreements with teams
• June 30, 2019: Restricted free agents can sign offer sheets
• June 30, 2019: Teams can sign players to rookie-scale deals, minimum-salary contracts and two-way contracts
>>>July 4, 2019: While transactions are not official, five days after start of free agency, 42 of top 50 free agents have reached agreements on new contracts
• July 6, 2019 (noon ET): Moratorium ends, all preliminary transactions can be made official
• July 6, 2019: Two-day period for matching offer sheets signed during moratorium begins
• July 13, 2019: Last day to withdraw qualifying offers to restricted free agents
• July 15, 2019: Last day to tender offers to first-round draft picks
• July 5-15, 2019: NBA summer league
• Sept. 28, 2019: Training camps open (107 days after end of NBA Finals)
As of the Fourth of July -- just five days after free agency began and two days before most of the moves from the past few days can be officially completed -- we know the fates of 84% of the 50 best available free agents. It took baseball 118 days of the winter to get to the same point. Soon, all of the NBA's top free agents will be accounted for, while baseball just finished its hot stove season last month when Kimbrel and Keuchel finally signed.
Simply put: Baseball needs to fix its offseason, if only because so much down time and lack of activity leaves too much time for naysayers to put out "baseball is dying" material. NBA writers, meanwhile, will be able to take some time off, then spend months analyzing the new state of things in the league they cover; and the league itself will go about promoting its new hierarchy, creating interest and buzz over what's to come, rather than fending off questions about what hasn't happened.
We're talking about two leagues with very different economic systems, of course. The NBA's breakneck transaction speed is entirely a function of its collective bargaining agreement with its players' association. The salary cap (and floor) is baked into the process, so players and their agents are racing with each other to claim what space there is. The best players shop for the best situation, with finances being a relatively small part of it. That's because, for better or worse, the CBA in basketball has established an upper limit for how much even the league's greatest stars can earn.
Another thing that helps fuel offseason interest in the NBA is the length of contracts. We were all interested in what we thought would be the exciting free agencies of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado this winter. That's not really how things ultimately unfolded, but both players ended up signing deals that will keep them off the market for at least the next decade. Mike Trout won't end up on the open market, either, since his extension likely will keep him in a Los Angeles Angels uniform through 2030. The maximum length of an NBA contract is five years. Rookies are locked up for, at most, four years. The market is always hopping.
I don't know how much any of this is realistic for a future version of Major League Baseball. But what we do know is that changes in the working agreements that keep the game operating are going to happen. Free agency is no longer functioning the way it was meant to when standards like six years of team control and the arbitration system were established. All of these things will come into play as we move toward the next version of a CBA in baseball.
The pace of the offseason will likely be secondary to all of this, but it might make sense for both sides in the negotiations to take the opportunity to do multiple things at once. If, for example, the players opt to move toward revenue certainty at the aggregate level (a fancy way of describing a more rigid salary-cap structure that would guarantee players a fixed percentage of the bounty), then a better hot stove calendar could be established.
One version of this could cram most those offseason calendar deadlines noted above into the weeks between the end of the World Series and the winter meetings, while having a moratorium against formal agreements. In other words, teams could start to flirt with free agents and other clubs about trades, while establishing how much cap space they might have to spend. No triggers could be pulled until December, when the winter meetings start. Then -- boom! -- four days of transaction heaven.
Just as in the NBA, not all business can be taken care of so quickly. There would be odds and ends, more trades and such. But instead of the daily whisper mill, we would spend two months analyzing and fantasizing about what the revamped teams will look like when they finally report for spring training. Teams could market to their fans in a more informed way. Anticipation for the season to come could be ramped up.
Maybe the NBA and MLB are just too different for the latter to ever create a hot stove sensation similar to what's happening in the NBA right now during its offseason. But this much is clear: The more of those positive vibes that baseball can steal for itself when the cold weather comes again, the warmer we will all feel toward the sport we love.
Extra innings
1. The Los Angeles Dodgers are on pace to win 109 games, which would break the franchise record by four. Pretty heady stuff for one of baseball's marquee clubs. This is just the latest excellent season for a group that's well on its way to a remarkable seventh straight National League West crown.
Let's say that each team's current 2019 win pace ends up as its actual final total, which of course won't happen. Let's pretend. That would give the Dodgers the most wins this season, the third most over the past two seasons and the second most for the past three campaigns. L.A. would lead the majors in the most wins for any stretch of seasons you would want to measure beyond that, up to nine. If you did a 10-year span, the Dodgers would rank second to the New York Yankees.
Since this would be the Dodgers' seventh straight division crown, let's zero in on seven-year win totals. The Dodgers, as mentioned, would lead the majors with 673, 36 more than the second-place Yankees. Historically speaking, 673 wins in a seven-year span would rank 110th all time out of 2,543 teams. Not bad.
But here's where we get to the obvious missing piece: The Dodgers have not won a World Series since 1988. Despite their historically elite run of regular-season success, this group remains titleless.
Of the 109 teams that have ranked ahead of the Dodgers by seven-year win totals -- and remember, there are quite a few overlaps, teams that rate on the list in multiple spans, like each Yankees team from 2004 to 2010 -- this is pretty unusual. The overall average number of titles during these seven-year measurements is 2.06.
Obviously, many of those teams didn't have to contend with the same expanded postseason formats that the Dodgers haven't quite been able to navigate through. Still, the point is clear: The Dodgers might well be remembered as the team of the 2010s. But we have to underscore the qualifier "might" in that statement. If L.A. can win a title this season, that observation becomes a lot more certain.
2. The flip side of the Dodgers' A-side season is a B-side of decidedly lesser quality. That would be a duet between the Baltimore Orioles, a franchise bearing the moniker of a bird that these days is singing a very depressing tune, and the sleepy-cat Detroit Tigers. If you hadn't noticed, this year's Orioles and Tigers are, like, really bad.
Despite beating the Cleveland Indians 13-0 two days in a row recently (only in baseball), the Orioles are on pace to be outscored by 320 runs this season and allow more than 1,000 runs. Both figures are historic, as I mentioned in this midseason roundup.
Only nine teams have been outscored by at least 320 runs in a season, with the record being set by the 1932 Boston Red Sox (349). Even after the first of those two routs against Cleveland, Baltimore was on pace to be outscored by 352 runs, which would have broken the record. But hey, things are trending upward.
But here's what I didn't mention in that roundup: As historically awful as the Orioles have been, they don't even rank last right now in my power rankings formula. That distinction goes to Detroit, which is on pace to be outscored by 310 runs against an easier schedule than the Orioles have faced in the American League East.
Whose season has been more depressing? Well, in Baltimore, at least the front office has the excuse of it being really the first year of its franchise reset, and Mike Elias and his staff didn't take over until Nov. 16. It will be a long time before we can pass judgment on Elias' rebuild.
And to be fair, it's probably too soon to pass judgment on the rebuild taking place in Detroit, led by general manager Al Avila. However, the Tigers are supposed to be farther down the line, and yet, the big league club still seems to be finding its way to rock bottom. It's hard to envy either fan base right now, but the path that the Tigers are on at the moment seems especially troublesome.
3. No matter how deep into the weeds you are with 2019-style analytics, if you can't still get excited about gaudy counting stats, I have to wonder just how big of a sports fan you really are. Are you a fan of baseball or a fan of corporate efficiency? I would really like to know, because one of those things is a whole lot more fun than the other.
That said, while I can still get revved up about big RBI totals or pitchers on pace to soar past 20 wins, here's a counting stat I never thought I'd pay any attention to at all: games started by pitchers. However, thanks to some of those 21st-century, analysis-fueled concepts, which gave birth to The Opener, that category has suddenly become very interesting.
After beginning the Tampa Bay Rays' 9-6 loss to Baltimore on Wednesday, right-hander Ryne Stanek might be on the way to recording some historically unique numbers. Stanek is on pace to start 47 games this season, a figure straight out of 1905. Forty-seven! If Stanek reaches that number, it would be the fourth-most starts for a pitcher during the modern era (since 1901), behind Jack Chesbro (51, 1904), Wilbur Wood (49, 1972), Ed Walsh (49, 1908), Wood again (48, 1973) and Joe McGinnity (48, 1903).
Of course, there is something very different about the way that Stanek is going about this, because he happens to simply be a relief pitcher used at the outset of games. While those four aforementioned ironmen averaged 417 innings in the seasons listed, Stanek is on pace for 90. Also, Happy Jack, Wilbah, Big Ed and Iron Joe earned their famous nicknames during those historic campaigns by averaging a combined 32 wins.
Stanek, in case you're wondering, has won exactly zero games.