{"id":19909,"date":"2026-10-29T14:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19909"},"modified":"2026-10-29T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:49:17","slug":"congrats-to-milwaukee-and-the-most-important-off-season-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=19909","title":{"rendered":"Congrats to Milwaukee and the most Important off-season in Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Congrats to Milwaukee, who blitzed their way to a 4-1 World Series win for the franchise&#8217; first ever title.  Not bad for the 30th ranked media market in the country, one that&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now for the fun part.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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&#8217;s a couple of links to the forthcoming off-season schedule of events.  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/mlb\/news\/mlb-offseason-dates-free-agency-start-lockout\/\">CBS Sports&#8217; Mike Axisa lays things out nicely<\/a>, as does <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2026\/10\/the-2026-27-offseason-begins.html\">MLBTraderumors<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until the 12\/1 date, there&#8217;s definitely some key dates that drive some of the artifacts that I maintain and\/or posts I like to write each off-season.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>With the end of the world series I&#8217;ve started the 2027 Draft Order XLS, which will be updated with the actual results of the Draft Lottery, if it actually happens.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;ve also updated a master xls I maintain of all the major sports league champions with the title.  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The real work starts in 5 days&#8217; time.  Five days after the World Series ends, a bunch of stuff happens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>All MLB FAs declared: 5 days after WS ends<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>All MILB FAs declared: 5 days after WS ends<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>6year MLFAs: 5 days after WS ends<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>60-day players returned to active roster: 5 days after WS ends<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Qualifying offers made: 5 days after WS ends<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, this means a TON of cut and pasting out of the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc\/edit?usp=sharing\">Big Board<\/a>.  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&#8217;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&#8217;ll cutting loose a slew of MLFAs.  I&#8217;ll do that work then probably publicize it in this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This deadline also means some Draft Tracker and IFA tracker work too to remove MLFAs.  There shouldn&#8217;t be too many.  I&#8217;ve already updated these two artifacts for &#8220;High Level&#8221; achieved for the players who remain.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I like tracking Qualifying Offers in depth, even though the players no longer make major mistakes with them.  He<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1f9oJDRmCD0rH7zVj5FlcJ65YvPiuVvpFz3dkyUhHuaI\/edit?usp=sharing\">re&#8217;s a link to the entire history of QO data<\/a>, to which i&#8217;ll add 2027 data in 5 day&#8217;s time and then keep updating it until the last player contract is settled (since it directly impacts the Draft Order xls).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mid November<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Qualifying offers accepted\/rejected: 10 days after QOs made, or 15 days after WS ends<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Update Draft order with possible compensation from QOs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>MLB 2026 Awards given out: GGs on 1st, ROY 9th, the rest 11th live<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Rule 5 player adds: Nov 17th for 2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Non-Tender Deadline: Nov 20th for 2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do annual rule 5 and Non-tender analysis, and have since the Blog&#8217;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&#8217;s still some Rule5 names out there to add, which means some movement on the currently full 40-man.  We&#8217;ll start talking about it soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I used to write a ton about the awards but i&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early Dec:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Dec 1: CBA expires, which may make the rest of this moot<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dec 7-9: Annual meetings, which include draft lottery and rule5 draft<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>HOF Balloting and voting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early Jan:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Arbitration pre-work and exchanging of numbers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>15th IFA class announced<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>19th: HOF class announced<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m guessing the annual Meetings don&#8217;t happen, and we&#8217;ll just have to see what happens with the rest of the planned Dec\/Jan\/Feb stuff.  But, if they happen, we&#8217;ll do updates to draft order XLS and arbitration analysis, plus Hall of Fame stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Welcome to the off-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congrats to Milwaukee, who blitzed their way to a 4-1 World Series win for the franchise&#8217; first ever title. Not bad for the 30th ranked media market in the country, one that&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4561,2036],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-nar-admin","category-post-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19910,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909\/revisions\/19910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}