UPWARD TRAJECTORY

In a typical season, players have enough time to overcome a slow start and still put up numbers that jump off the page. That was not the case in 2020.

With the regular season reduced to 60 games, a slow two- or three-week start was enough to weigh down a player’s statistics for the entire year. With the stresses of Covid-19, having to shut down and then ramp back up after a nearly four-month layoff, new and unfamiliar testing regimens and protocols, the lack of fans in the stands, restrictions on using in-game video and everything else that changed in 2020, many players understandably took a few