Major League Baseball’s offseason officially began in early November, after the Atlanta Braves won the World Series. Since then, any player whose contract expired at the end of the season became a free agent. The Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers already made a trade. All the usual offseason machinations have begun.
But this offseason seems likely to be unusually busy – or perhaps unusually not busy, depending on how things go – because MLB and the players’ union are in the process of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement that will need to be in place for the offseason to proceed as usual and the 2022 season to start on time.