Figuring out what to make of this odd MLB season is a tough task

When new Chicago Cubs manager David Ross spoke to his players at the outset of this strange season, he mentioned to them that they really had nothing to lose. If you don't play well over the 60 games, nobody is going to hold that against you because the sample size is so small, and if you play well, you can win some ballgames and have some fun.

Ross might not have meant every word literally, because yes, results matter to some degree, even in 2020. Some players who have struggled have been pulled from rotations and lineups or demoted to alternate sites, and some players who have thrived have seen their roles enhanced. But evaluators around baseball say that a lot of this year's performances, good or bad, will not necessarily be taken at face value because of the staggering number of variables at play.

1. There are no fans in the stands, which, for a lot of players, impacts adrenaline, anxiety, focus and performance.

2. The shortened season. "If this was a normal year," one longtime evaluator said, "and somebody came up to you at the end of May" -- near the typical 60-game mark -- "and tried to draw conclusions about a player, you'd laugh them off the planet."

3. The weird stop-and-start nature of the season, with the ramp-up in the first weeks of spring training, the shutdown in mid-March, the sudden acceleration leading up to summer camp in July, and then the restart after the abbreviated second training camp. "Much less than ideal," one NL evaluator said. "You don't really have any precedent to go by to know how the players might be affected by it."

4. The staggering number of pitchers who have been deployed, mostly as relievers. "You see all of these teams relying on the bullpens to get them through games, and over the course of a [162-game] regular season, you couldn't do that," said a GM. "But this is how teams are handling their games, and it affects the pitchers, it affects the hitting, and it probably can't be replicated again." Said another evaluator: "Look at the number of appearances some of these guys are making -- 45, 50 percent of their team's games. That's not something they would do in a normal year. Managers and pitching coaches are handling these guys a lot differently than they usually would."

5. The baseball experience -- the baseball life -- is completely different than in other years. Players are effectively locked down whether they are at home or on the road, and as Sean Doolittle first mentioned during summer camp, there could well be some kind of emotional toll being extracted among players. If you're a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, for example, you've seen your season shut down for more than two weeks; you've been quarantined in a hotel in Milwaukee at length; and you'll probably wind up playing about a dozen doubleheaders to make up for games lost.

6. This is the first year that MLB has enforced a rule against players viewing video in-game, drawing a lot of complaints from the likes of J.D. Martinez and Javier Baez. The change stems from the sign-stealing scandals, and while a lot of players and staffers believe there's a way for Major League Baseball to allow hitters access to video that has become such an important tool for so many, for now the rules are pretty stiff.

7. The schedules. In most years, all teams would play a lot of games against a representative cross-section of teams -- great, mediocre, terrible. This season is a little different. "Look at the AL West teams," one staffer said. "Oakland is really good, Houston is banged up, and the Angels, Mariners and Rangers are terrible. So if half of your games are against really awful teams, how does that shape your performance."

The NL evaluator drew a comparison between how teams would treat the results of this season to how a professor might handle a wide swath of test results that fall well below expectations -- everybody will be graded on a curve, in a way. Said another: "I think if you play well, you'll generally get the benefit of the doubt. And if you're an established player and don't do well, I don't think anybody is going to care and hold that against you."

The list of star players performing well below the numbers on the backs of their baseball cards is long and distinguished. Entering Sunday, Shohei Ohtani was batting .189, with an OPS 213 points lower than last season. Former MVP Christian Yelich was batting .203, the Dodgers' Max Muncy .194, 2019 MVP candidate Marcus Semien .221, free agent-to-be George Springer .239. Among pitchers, Jose Berrios has a 4.40 ERA, the talented Chris Paddack is at 4.74, Patrick Corbin is at 4.10 ... the list goes on and on.

Would those ugly numbers correct themselves if the season had another 100 games? Are there players who desperately miss the fans? Are some players simply less invested than others? It's really impossible to know, which is why some teams may be more interested in the underlying numbers -- spin rate for pitchers, exit velocity for hitters -- than the numbers that might normally steer them.

"It's weird," the longtime evaluator said, "because you really don't know what statistics are going to matter this winter."

• During the shutdown, there had been a lot of grumbling in front offices around baseball because of the perception that commissioner Rob Manfred has been disconnected -- and as touched on here a couple of weeks ago, the dismissive tone with which the Mets' Brodie Van Wagenen spoke of Manfred's leadership in a hot-mic situation has been echoed elsewhere. Last week, Manfred took a stride toward reconnecting with the front offices, sharing a Zoom call with top club baseball operations executives for the first time since the shutdown.

• The 36-year-old Zack Greinke started for the Astros on Sunday night, bearing an interesting Hall of Fame resume -- a 3.35 career ERA, 208 wins and 124 losses, but more importantly, an adjusted ERA+ of 126, which is just a tick lower than Tom Seaver (127), and higher than, among others, Hall of Famers John Smoltz, Mike Mussina and Don Drysdale. Greinke has racked up 67.3 WAR, according to Baseball Reference, more than Roy Halladay, Bob Feller, Juan Marichal and other Hall of Famers.

Plus, if Greinke were ever voted into the Hall of Fame -- and I think he will be -- it would be one of the more entertaining induction weeks, with former teammates telling some of the best of the many great Zack Greinke stories. Such as the time he grew frustrated with Yasiel Puig and the delay of the team's travel in Chicago, exited the bus and threw Puig's bag down the street, with a plot twist. It wasn't actually Puig's bag; Greinke had hurled a different player's bag.

• The number of front-office types who see a need for MLB to rescue the sport from the parade-of-relievers strategy is growing. "I think somebody needs to save us from ourselves," one staffer said, "with the recognition that this is entertainment."

Teams have chased the pitching analytics and followed the premise that a fresh pitcher is always better than a pitcher facing a lineup for a second or third time, and the resulting strategy may be completely justified by the numbers -- but it has led to the deployment of armies of relievers.

"Let's face it," one GM said. "A lot of these guys are not going to be [in the big leagues] for more than two or three years, and a lot of them are going to get hurt. What fans are you pulling in with those guys?"