At least some front offices will evaluate strength of schedule, to better evaluate performance context. If a team's early season slate is stacked with a bunch of games against contending teams, or a couple of brutal road trips through the opposite coast, or a bunch of games against tanking teams, then the folks who made the decisions can apply the appropriate qualifiers to the results, whatever those are.
This will be particularly relevant this year, now that the July 31 trade deadline has been cemented. Under the old rules, decisions about whether to buy, sell, or hold could be deferred until late August, but those decisions now must be made just after the All-Star break at the latest.