Kris Bryant Still Headed For Free Agency In 2021

Early Friday afternoon, the MLB players’ association and the league agreed to terms on a number of changes in light of the coronavirus shutdown. The details of those emerged late Thursday, and key among them was the impact on players’ service time if a full 162-game season is not possible.

In short, whether the season is shortened or canceled altogether, players will not be held back from earning another year of service time. They will earn as many days toward their service time clock as they did in 2019.

The 2021 free agent class will have some big names, and one of the biggest will be Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant. The new agreement between MLB and the players that was officially ratified Friday means that Bryant — whose date for free agency was in question all winter because of the service time grievance that he ultimately lost — will hit the market when the 2020 season ends.

It is highly unlikely at this point that anything close to a 162-game schedule is possible, and in order to get a full year of service time this season, players had to agree to prorated salaries for this year. If the season is canceled completely, then they will get only the $170 million lump-sum advance.

As a part of the agreement, regular season play can continue all the way through October and push the start of the postseason into November, which would allow for an extra month’s worth of regular season games to try and get in as many as possible.

But for Bryant, the most important part is that he can become an unrestricted free agent after this season, whatever it looks like.

In the collective bargaining agreement that expires in December, players were under team control for six service-time “years” before they could hit the open market. This created a loophole for teams to delay a rookie’s debut until at least mid-April in order to delay the start of their service time clock and thus buy another year of control. In Bryant’s case, he didn’t debut until April 17, 2015, the ninth game of that season.

Since then, Bryant earned National League Rookie of the Year honors, won the National League MVP in 2016, and has been an All-Star three times. He has 138 home runs and a .901 OPS in his five-year career thus far. Obviously, he will be a highly-sought after target when he becomes available.

That might come if the Cubs put him up for a trade this summer. Right now the July 31 trade deadline still appears to be in place, though that could also change in the near future. Whether or not Bryant is on the trading block this summer will depend on how well Chicago’s season unfolds once it begins. Doubtless many teams will be paying close attention to the Cubs’ spot in the standings.

The decision to allow all players to still accrue service time is a good one for players like Bryant who are still under team control and have to wait for free agency to reach their full earning potential. It also creates the unusual possibility that Mookie Betts and David Price, both traded to the Dodgers from Boston in February and both also set to hit free agency this winter, to sign with new teams for next season without having played a single game for Los Angeles.

If Bryant goes to free agency without being traded, Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado’s contract might provide some kind of framework. In February 2019, Arenado agreed to an eight-year, $260 million extension with Colorado. Arenado debuted in 2013, so he edges Bryant in the counting stats, but the two have very similar numbers in things like overall batting average and OPS.

The difference for Bryant might be that he was injured for a large chunk of the 2018 season and missed time last year as well, so his best performances are now a few seasons ago. Suitors will have to decide if they think he can recapture the kind of production that earned him the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards in consecutive seasons. Bryant turned just 28 in January, so that’s probably a safe bet.

For their part, the Cubs are not ruling out the possibility of working to keep Bryant.

“There’s always a chance,” team president Theo Epstein said in January. “There’s always a chance for everything. We’re realistic about it. It’s been a few years with some of these guys where we’ve tried to get something done. Hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the future. It’s really hard to predict the future and you never know.”

COVID-19 brought rapid changes to the baseball world, and a lot is still up in the air at this point. The league and players have at least decided on a few of the important parameters for what the 2020 season will look like and how it will impact their service time.

For Bryant, it assured that he will reach free agency on schedule. And for the Cubs, that they will have their own decisions to make in the coming months.

“You have to work so hard to get to free agency,” Epstein said. “You have to be the best of the best and you have to do it for six full years in order to have a chance to do what we would all want to do as non-players, which is to have the right to have to work where you want to work and know where your family is going to be and try to maximize your value in the marketplace. That’s the players’ right. I would never hold it against them. You deal with the consequences on both sides.”