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MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Said He Will Retire In 2029. Here’s Who Could Replace Him via @Forbes https://t.co/tYYOg9LfUK
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) February 16, 2024
I get where you are coming from, but a change won’t change anything. The days of an independent commissioner who cared about the game more than the biased interests of owners (or players) are gone and will never return. This job is all about making the owners as much money as possible so whoever the replacement is, his priority will be the same. But maybe the replacement could at least pretend to care about the fans. Manfred doesn’t even try to hide his distaste.
That’s the problem. He’s a labor lawyer and not a fan of the game, the lore, and the traditions.
Or a fan of the fans, the way he should be, as you said.Boras and the MLBPA would probably never let this happen but this is one of the few Manfred ideas I agree with.
Manfred: MLB Favors Free Agent Signing Deadline https://t.co/l76tQOtpce pic.twitter.com/wASQgY2H4G
— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) February 16, 2024
How would a signing deadline even work? Guys get released mid-season all the time and then sign with someone else. Would they now be barred from signing with a team until the end of the season? Or suppose your team goes into Spring Training and someone you were counting on gets hurt? You wouldn’t be able to sign anyone from anywhere? No more reinforcements from the Independent Leagues.
This would also give the owners an extreme advantage in negotiations. They are the ones with the money and the jobs. So they could just wait out the mid-level players and force them to take a lesser deal at the deadline or be out of a job for the season. This is why the players don’t want any such thing. The whole point of free agency is that you are free to sign with whomever whenever. It might be annoying to fans when these guys try to wait out getting a deal that they want. But that’s a small price for the players to pay in order to continue making the process “free” choice.
I’m not sure of the details but it is something the NBA has managed to figure out. 90% of their transactions take place during the first week of July. It is quite the exciting frenzy.
Yeah, it would be nice if it was more of a frenzy. Baseball free agency is infinitely slow. But it’s night and day difference in the setup. The NBA has revenue sharing and a lot of set salary structures. Plus they have fewer positions to hire for.
The question I ask myself is “Who would benefit from the deadline?”
The clear answer is the teams. This is why the owners’ top employee, the commissioner, is in favor.
If I am a player and I don’t receive an offer that I like, why should there be an artificial deadline to make me sign? Who is hurt other than me if I choose not to sign?
Bottom line, I am dead set against an arbitrary deadline. For the reason I described, the Players Association will likely not agree unless the owners make a concession in some other area that they perceive will benefit them equally.
No doubt the owners would benefit more than the players but that isn’t the reason I would be in favor. I just think it would be more exciting for the fans. They could align it around the Winter Meetings to generate anticipation and excitement, which would really help market the game. Everyone on this board are hardcore fans who eat, sleep, and live MLB 24/7 but the casual fan thinks about it differently.
Of all the disuputes between the owners and MLBPA this issue is probably very low on the priority list but it may come again in conjunction with other issues.
The game is in pretty good shape, so despite the detractors Manny (as 1TD might call him) has done a decent job. I love the pitch clock – it makes the game play more like I remember it as a youngster.
If he can work out a lifting of the ridiculous blackout situation, I would give him kudos for that.
He is definitely an owner’s agent. He keeps the billionaires adding to their estates. But the players are not exactly holding cardboard signs on street corners either.
All-in-all, he’s done okay. I think the NFL is the best run professional sports league. But then they have the game that appeals to the broadest audience, and they don’t play a lot of games so there is that anticipation factor. But MLB has hung in there and done okay.
My scorecard.
Negatives:
Lockout, labor strife
Inconsistent baseballs
Calling World Series trophy “a piece of hardware”
Sign stealing scandal handling
Condensing the minor leagues/fighting paying players fair wages
Automatic runner
Payroll disparity
Continued blackoutsPositives:
Pitch clock
Globalization push
Ownership profitabilityOn blackouts, Manfred has been commissioner for a decade and he hasn’t accomplished anything in that area. In fairness, he inherited the problem, but 10 years later, it is still here. I will gladly give him kudos if he ever actually gets anything done to fix blackouts. In the meantime, no credit given.
Why has it not been a high priority? Because it doesn’t make his bosses more money. It is as simple as it is frustrating to fans.
It is as simple as it is frustrating to fans.
Given attendance and ratings, it seems presumptuous to generalize and describe ‘fans’ as frustrated. On the contrary, it could be said that the numbers show the ‘fans’ are content and happy with the product. There are some complainers, and some of them have a soap box to stand on, but the numbers do not lie. I am not happy with the product and have mostly opted out, but I do not consider myself typical in that respect, and the numbers demonstrate that I am not.
If you lived in an area of the country such as Iowa, where six teams are entirely blacked out, you would appreciate how big the blackouts are. I can assure you there are large areas of the country where this is a huge issue.
I understand that it is a big issue for some people. I argue against extrapolating that into fans in general thinking its a big issue. My point is that the numbers prove fans in general are content. Ticket sales are strong, ratings are good.
The subject of discussion on this thread had been the commissioner, who is among the lowest rated in professional sports. General fan feelings about the game are a related, but different topic. Fortunately the game itself is bigger than one man.
My comment you quoted was specifically about blackouts and was not extrapolated to anything. That is only one of many reasons Manfred is so disliked, as detailed above.
Making more money for his bosses in the short run may be penny wise pound foolish. Fans are customers and should be treated as such. Alienate them and the attendance will decline as well as the lucrative cable contracts because of declining viewership.
Sadly, baseball is a sport that simply doesn’t move the needle as much as the other big organizations in sports. The NFL is so far ahead of MLB that it can’t even been seen anymore. NBA has passed MLB as well. Soccer is likely to push past baseball eventually as well.
Can anything be done to turn the tide in the US? Probably not. It would take some superstar, American born athletes choosing the game and having the type of personality to drive interest outside of their locality. A Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan type, if you will…a generational talent who has a great personality and is driven to intense greatness that brings eyeballs just to watch the display of it. Otherwise the fan base will simply continue to age as it has for decades.
As such, Manfred has taken some good steps to improve the game and has made some missteps as well. Brian outlined several above and I generally agree with his list. Ending blackouts would be a great next step before he moves on.
The blackout rule is certainly a big sore spot. I can’t understand why you would limit exposure to your product. Well, I can in that it keeps certain cable moguls happy. But cable is dying – and with MLB still hanging on to that media it is just one more thing that makes the game seem out of touch with the modern world.
The runner on second in extras is pretty lame, but all sports have put in measures to more quickly decide ties. I would do compromise sort of in the way hockey does, where they have an overtime, but if the game is still tied at that point they go to a shoot out.
For baseball, play the standard extra innings through 12. If still tied, then go to the runner-on-second. The big issue with baseball and long games is that the current practice is to limit pitchers throwing a lot of innings. If you get a game that goes 15 innings you won’t be able to have enough pitchers.
It used to be there were a couple of guys you could put out there who could give you six innings, even more on occasion. But no one has the old classic “long reliever” anymore. It’s a “7th inning guy”, a “setup (8th) inning guy”, and a one inning closer.
Now and then a middle inning guy might be called on to really stretch it and go two innings. But he will need a couple of days off after putting that much effort out there.
While I’m not a fan of Manfred, I have mixed emotions about the ghost runner rule for extra innings. Teams just aren’t built to play extra innings anymore – at least not more 10-12 innings so this rule has done a good job of solving that problem. At least artificially solving it. Pitchers now are all built on max effort. And they are judged 100% by their results and the quality of those pitches. And if they get judged poorly, their pay goes down by a LOT. So if you’re a middle relief guy coming in for the 11th inning, do you do your best to give your team potentially 3-5 innings by not giving max effort and just trying to get outs any way you can because that might be best for the team? Or do you go out there and pitch like a 1-inning relief guy throwing with max effort and just hope your offense scores? In today’s game, you take the 2nd option because that one pays you more money. Sure, “team players” are nice and that might be worth a little in free agency, but it’s not worth near as much as results. That’s the problem. In the past, there wasn’t as much money at stake. Today, everyone is evaluating every pitch you make and putting it on a scorecard and then paying you based on that scorecard. So you can’t let up ever.
But I do miss the fun things that happen in those long games. I remember a game against I believe the Mets that went 18 or 19 innings and Kyle Lohse was our left Fielder for the last couple innings. In those games you’re just trying to find a way to win with fewer and fewer good options and it forces interesting things to happen. Which is fun. Watching a ball hit to left field and crossing your fingers that Lohse was going to track it down and raising your hands in victory when he catches a routine fly ball is indeed kind of fun. But then again, it’s not as fun when it’s a Thursday night game and the game goes past midnight and you have to get up to go to work the next day and the team has to fly that night to their next destination. So I get it. It’s a necessary evil for the game today and I’m ok with it because of that.
Nearly all these sports are merely the same game. Football: players run up and down the field and put or kick the ball over the goal; basketball: players run up and down the court and throw the ball into a basket; hockey: players skate up and down the ice and whack the puck into the goal with a stick; soccer: players run up and down the field and kick the ball into a net; rugby: players run up and down the field to put the ball over the goal line; but with baseball, ahhh baseball… the thinking man’s game.
Jnevel -nice expansion on what I think about the runner-on-second-in-extras as well. Kind of a silly thing, but a necessary evil given the evolution of the game.
You make an excellent point in that the real driver of changes is the big money involved. It changes everything.
In the Super Bowl, I was rooting for Kansas City, but did not really care much about who won. However, I leaned towards the Chiefs because I am not much of a McCaffery fan. And the reason for that is because he sat out Stanford’s bowl game his last year in college. That was totally money driven – insuring he would get the big contract was more important than his teammates, coaches, fans, fellow students and faculty. But then again, I can understand his decision and cannot say that if put in the same situation I would not have done that same thing.
It’s that way in all big-time sports leagues. Money is first and foremost, and the game, the fans, and anyone not having their fingers in the financial pie are not given consideration.
You hit the nail on the head BikeMike. We have become a very sports-centric society where these guys are basically worshipped which is why they and the owners make so much money. On the plus side, it drives these guys to insane competitive levels to be absolutely great at what they do so we get to watch amazing athletes at work. But on the downside, it often doesn’t seem as pure anymore. And I hate that part of it. And so I find myself torn in a constant internal battle – I love the game but hate the business that has taken over the game. I love all the stats but I hate the fact that everyone everywhere dissects them to the minutiae. And I love the team, but I hate that it’s really just using me for my money. And so it goes with the world of sports today.
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