Monday BP: How would the cancellation of the 2020 MLB season impact the Giants rebuild?

With news coming out that social distancing measures will be in place until the end of April, we know the MLB season won’t be starting anytime soon.

Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic wrote an interesting piece on how the cancellation of the 2020 season won’t slow things down for San Francisco’s rebuild.

Baggarly broke things down and gave his reasoning, which includes:

• Service-time accrual will have a minimal impact on the Giants roster.
• Players with multiyear contracts will be that much closer to sunsetting.
• The Giants are better capitalized than most teams to withstand a crippling loss of revenue.
• The Giants are positioned to make out reasonably well with a reduced draft.
• As much as losing a year of development time would be a setback, the Giants wouldn’t lose momentum in their rebuilding effort.

While the Giants aren’t expecting to contend this season, losing a year of development for the younger players will be impactful. I agree with Baggarly on his point of free agency and San Francisco missing out an opportunity to flip assets for young players and prospects.

It will be interesting to see what the league decides to do if the shutdown continues into late May/June. MLB could resume play with a reduced schedule and cutting the season down to somewhere in the 80-100 games range.

Do you agree with Baggarly’s points?

Here some more links:

Giants’ Mauricio Dubon shares hilarious story of meeting Hunter Pence (NBC Bay Area)

Five ways Giants will be affected by MLB’s new deal, from drafts to free agents (SF Chronicle)

Inside the Giants’ 2012 World Series sweep of Tigers from reporter’s view (NBC Bay Area)