For about a minute, it seemed like Major League Baseball seasons were roughly 102 games too long.
The World Series brought the best team in the American League to play the best team in the National League, and the better of those two teams won in a close and entertaining six games. More conveniently, one of the game's biggest stars put his team ahead with some brilliant baserunning, then put the game away with a solo shot.
The Dodgers, after being beat in two World Series by teams whose managers were fired due to their involvement in a sign-stealing scandal, ended up getting the ring they might have deserved years earlier. Maybe it doesn't register the same as a traditional March-October journey, but considering they had the best shot of any team to win the 2020 World Series before the pandemic shut everything down, it didn't seem like anything was truly lost in the abridged season.
And then we learned that Justin Turner, who left the game in the eighth inning for undisclosed reasons, did so because his COVID-19 test came back positive. There are so many questions, and the first attempt at answering it failed to satisfy.
It doesn't answer why this was the best they could do with all the time afforded by an off day followed by a night game, and the only game in the sport. It doesn't answer why the on-field celebration was allowed to proceed as though nothing happened. And everybody is going to wonder what would've happened if the Rays somehow forced a Game 7.
The one hope was that Turner's test threw a false positive, although given that it's the only tidy conclusion amid a whole bunch of awful ones. It would've been hard to trust that report without any other verification, and according to Ken Rosenthal, it's not the case anyway. In fact, he goes further and says that Turner's first test was not inconclusive, but positive.
As it stands, it's within the realm of possibility that the 2020 Major League Baseball season ended with a super-spreader event. That's a little much. I could accept the best teams playing and the best teams winning despite the shortened season and extended postseason introducing a greater-than-ever chance of complete randomness, but the Chekhov's gun-assed last-minute COVID-19 result is just too on-the-nose to take any of this seriously.
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Regardless, the World Series is over, so the offseason is officially here. Here are the important dates to note through the rest of this cursed calendar year.
Today: Players on expiring deals become free agents, and A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora can officially interview for their next major-league jobs.
Nov. 1: The deadline for exercising or declining options and extending the qualifying offer, after which free agents can sign with any team.
Nov. 2: We'll see where José Abreu, Luis Robert and Rick Renteria stand as the finalists are announced for Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year awards.
Nov. 3: We'll see whether four of the five White Sox nominated for Gold Gloves have sealed the deal (with two catchers, one of them will be left out of the fun by default).
Nov. 9: Rookie the Year winners announced.
Nov. 10: Manager of the Year winners announced.
Nov. 11: Cy Young winners announced.
Nov. 12: MVP winners announced.
Nov. 20: Deadline for adding players to the 40-man roster in order to protect them from the Rule 5 draft.
Dec. 2: The deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players arrives.
Dec. 6: Winter Meetings start, form to be determined.
(Photo by Chris Martin)
