Congrats to Milwaukee, who blitzed their way to a 4-1 World Series win for the franchise’ first ever title. Not bad for the 30th ranked media market in the country, one that’s made the playoffs 8 out of the last 9 years and who had more wins this year than the Dodgers with 1/4th the payroll.
Now for the fun part.
As has been well publicized, the CBA expires between the Owners and Players Union on Dec 1st, 2026, and it seems 100% that the owners will lockout the players and all off-season activities grind to a halt. But, that being said, here’s a couple of links to the forthcoming off-season schedule of events. CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa lays things out nicely, as does MLBTraderumors.
Until the 12/1 date, there’s definitely some key dates that drive some of the artifacts that I maintain and/or posts I like to write each off-season.
- With the end of the world series I’ve started the 2027 Draft Order XLS, which will be updated with the actual results of the Draft Lottery, if it actually happens.
- I’ve also updated a master xls I maintain of all the major sports league champions with the title.
The real work starts in 5 days’ time. Five days after the World Series ends, a bunch of stuff happens:
- All MLB FAs declared: 5 days after WS ends
- All MILB FAs declared: 5 days after WS ends
- 6year MLFAs: 5 days after WS ends
- 60-day players returned to active roster: 5 days after WS ends
- Qualifying offers made: 5 days after WS ends
So, this means a TON of cut and pasting out of the Big Board. I have already locked the 2026 tabs and started the 2027 versions, but for now all 60 day players and pending MLFAs remain on the rosters. We’re sitting at 150 players on the domestic rosters at present, with another 21 on the 60-day DL that will move back to the active rosters just as we’ll cutting loose a slew of MLFAs. I’ll do that work then probably publicize it in this space.
This deadline also means some Draft Tracker and IFA tracker work too to remove MLFAs. There shouldn’t be too many. I’ve already updated these two artifacts for “High Level” achieved for the players who remain.
I like tracking Qualifying Offers in depth, even though the players no longer make major mistakes with them. Here’s a link to the entire history of QO data, to which i’ll add 2027 data in 5 day’s time and then keep updating it until the last player contract is settled (since it directly impacts the Draft Order xls).
Mid November
- Qualifying offers accepted/rejected: 10 days after QOs made, or 15 days after WS ends
- Update Draft order with possible compensation from QOs
- MLB 2026 Awards given out: GGs on 1st, ROY 9th, the rest 11th live
- Rule 5 player adds: Nov 17th for 2026
- Non-Tender Deadline: Nov 20th for 2026
I do annual rule 5 and Non-tender analysis, and have since the Blog’s beginning. That analysis has been circumvented in a big way this year thanks to the team calling up every able-bodied reliever on the AAA roster, but there’s still some Rule5 names out there to add, which means some movement on the currently full 40-man. We’ll start talking about it soon.
I used to write a ton about the awards but i’ve lost the stamina to do so anymore. I also used to do deep-dives into the Fielding Bible and Gold Glove awards, but they seem to be better now than they used to.
Early Dec:
- Dec 1: CBA expires, which may make the rest of this moot
- Dec 7-9: Annual meetings, which include draft lottery and rule5 draft
- HOF Balloting and voting
Early Jan:
- Arbitration pre-work and exchanging of numbers
- 15th IFA class announced
- 19th: HOF class announced
I’m guessing the annual Meetings don’t happen, and we’ll just have to see what happens with the rest of the planned Dec/Jan/Feb stuff. But, if they happen, we’ll do updates to draft order XLS and arbitration analysis, plus Hall of Fame stuff.
Welcome to the off-season.