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Rob Manfred Discusses Rule Changes, Playoff Expansion

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OCT. 23: Manfred told Dan Patrick “all of the COVID-related rule changes,” including extra innings, the universal DH and seven-inning doubleheaders, are likely to “return to the status quo, absent an agreement with the players association” in 2021. Of course, a lack of a universal DH could have an effect on quite a few free agents, including Nelson Cruz. Meanwhile, Manfred once again did admit he would like to expand the playoffs, but not necessarily to 16 teams.

OCT. 22: Commissioner Rob Manfred hopes that a couple of 2020’s changes will stay as long-term additions to the MLB season, per Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. Manfred spoke in favor of an “expanded playoff format,” though he was careful to say that the 16-team format from this year might be a bridge too far.

Manfred would aim for something between the standard 10-team format at this year’s 16-teamer. He has previously advocated for a 14-team postseason, which would reward the top team in each league with a bye through the first round, with the bottom-6 playoff teams facing off in an elimination round much like this year’s Wild Card format to create the 4-team Divisional match-ups in each league.

Manfred is also in favor of keeping the man-on-second extra innings rule. Blum notes that the longest games this season were a pair of 13-inning affairs. The rule certainly drove more action in extra innings, and though eliminating the couple of marathon-type extra innings games would seem to be a small victory in the grand scheme of things, MLB can check that box, it would seem.

Once the season ends, Manfred will be back to the laborious process of negotiation with Head of the Players’ Union Tony Clark. It won’t be a total back-to-the-drawing-board situation, but given the temporary nature of this season, the changes that were made will need to be re-addressed this winter.

Latest On Potential Playoff Expansion

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To help compensate for the sport’s massive pandemic-driven revenue losses, MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed on a 16-team playoff field with a first-round, three-game wild card series for the 2020 season. That agreement covered this year only, but Commissioner Rob Manfred made headlines a few weeks ago when he said he was “a fan of the expanded playoffs” and hoped to keep them around permanently.

Rather than maintain the 16-team field, though, the league’s preference is to adopt a 14-team format, per Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. Under such a system, the team with the best record in each league could potentially receive a first-round bye.

Rosenthal casts doubt on whether that idea would be acceptable to the MLBPA, which fears adding playoff teams could disincentivize clubs from aggressively pursuing roster upgrades. That concern spurred the MLBPA to reject MLB’s push for a 2021 playoff expansion during the parties’ first round of talks this summer. The Players Association also expressed reservation about the physical toll an extra playoff round could take on some players, per Rosenthal.

Typically, players receive a share of gate revenues during the playoffs. This year, with no fans in attendance (until the NLCS), the parties agreed players would receive a $50MM bonus pool from the league’s television revenues in exchange for expansion. That’s a small percentage of the league’s $1 billion estimate for TV revenues this fall, Rosenthal points out. Estimated revenues will further increase over the next decade thanks to the league’s recent broadcasting deals with Turner and Fox.

Also complicating matters is the generally icy relationship between players and owners, Rosenthal notes. The sides were unable to agree on return-to-play measures following weeks of back-and-forth this summer, pushing Manfred to impose a 60-game schedule. The parties’ subsequent agreement on playoff expansion may have eased tensions somewhat, but there’s still a general expectation of acrimony between the two sides moving forward, particularly with the current collective bargaining agreement expiring in December 2021. Potential long-term playoff expansion will surely be a big talking point over the coming months, but the parties seemingly have plenty of work to do to push that over the edge.

MLB Designates Three Independent Leagues As Official “Partner Leagues”

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Sept. 25: Both the American Association and the Frontier League have indeed been introduced as formal “partner leagues” as well, MLB has announced. The league’s press release indicates that both will “collaborate with MLB on initiatives to provide organized baseball to communities throughout the United States and Canada.”

“We welcome the American Association and Frontier Leagues as Partner Leagues, and look forward to working with them toward our shared goal of expanding the geographic reach of baseball,” Sword said in a new statement.

Sept. 23: Major League Baseball on Wednesday announced that the independent Atlantic League has been officially designated as MLB’s first “partner league.” As a partner league, the Atlantic League will “meet regularly with MLB to discuss joint marketing and promotional opportunities, including the leagues’ shared goal of providing baseball to communities throughout the United States,” per the press release announcing the partnership.

There was already an existing relationship between MLB and the Atlantic League, which has in recent years been a testing ground for experimental MLB rules such as the extra-innings runner on second base, pitch clocks, larger bases and even automated strike zones. Today’s agreement not only expands that relationship but extends the arrangement through the 2023 season.

“We are excited to extend our relationship with the Atlantic League, which provides us a unique means to push the sport forward,” MLB executive vice president of baseball economics and operations Morgan Sword said in a statement within the release. “The Atlantic League clubs and players have been great partners to us as we jointly test ways to make our game even more interesting and engaging to fans.”

The Athletic’s Evan Drellich reported this morning that MLB had been pursuing agreements not only with the Atlantic League but also with other high-profile independent leagues, including the American Association and the Frontier League. Minor league team owners who spoke with Drellich expressed trepidation that such partnerships could be used as leverage by MLB in ongoing talks with MiLB about a new Professional Baseball Agreement between the two parties.

It’s also possible that some clubs that are cut in the inevitable, broad-reaching contraction of the lower-level minor leagues could land in the Atlantic League or other newly appointed “partner leagues,” per Drellich. A timeline on additional agreements with the American Association, Frontier League or other indie circuits isn’t clear, but the PBA between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball expires next week.

Manfred Hopes To Make Expanded Playoff Format Permanent

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The 2020 MLB season looks like nothing we’ve ever seen in the sport’s century-plus history. A 60-game schedule with 28-man rosters, frequent seven-inning doubleheaders, a universal DH and runners magically manifesting on the bases in extra innings have all been chalked up as necessities to get through a pandemic-shortened season that had a limited ramp-up period and was set to take place in a span of just 67 days. This year’s 16-team playoff field was implemented as a means to help curb some of the broad-reaching revenue losses that have hit all 30 clubs.

Unsurprisingly, however, it seems as though MLB is mulling the permanent implementation of some of these aspects. Speaking at an online event hosted by Hofstra University this week, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he hopes to make the expanded postseason format permanent, adding that he believes the opposition to the universal DH is waning and stating that the extra-inning rule has been received better than he anticipated (YouTube link to the entire 71-minute appearance).

“I’m a fan of the expanded playoffs,” Manfred said of this year’s 16-team field. “…I think getting back to that three-game series in the first round is a positive change. I think the initial round could have the kind of appeal you see in the early couple days in the NCAA tournament. It’s going to be crazy — just a lot of baseball in a compressed period of time. We’re going to have a bracket, obviously. People love brackets and love picking who’s going to come through those brackets. I think there’s a lot to commend it. It is one of those changes that I hope becomes a permanent part of our landscape.”

Nothing is set in stone on that front just yet, but the concept of an expanded playoff structure had been discussed and was generally supported by the “overwhelming majority” of owners prior to this year’s implementation, per Manfred.

Postseason expansion has indeed been floated speculatively in the past, although pushing all the way to 16 teams was an even more radical jump than ownership initially sought in return-to-play negotiations. Back in March, the league was reportedly looking at a 14-team structure, although that presumably would’ve served as a gateway to the 16-team format that is now in place. It’s also odd to tie the three-game Wild Card series to postseason expansion, as the league could simply have pushed the existing, sudden-death Wild Card Game into a three-game series without adding more teams to the field.

The league can spin the reasoning however it chooses, positioning the broadened structure as a win for fans — that surely is the case in many instances — but the ultimate goal is the greatly increased revenue associated with extra postseason play. With or without fans in attendance, adding six teams to the field will cause television revenue to soar. It’s been reported that this year’s expansion could generate $200-300MM in additional television revenue, and the potential for broadened gate revenue in subsequent seasons only creates further incentive for teams to endorse the larger field.

Manfred wasn’t so straightforward with his own personal endorsement of the universal designated hitter, but he strongly implied that he feels the on-field product is enhanced by the DH in the National League.

“I think that playing with the designated hitter every day, the best I could tell you right now, has softened the opposition to the DH in the National League,” said Manfred. “The experience of doing it, the offense that it injects into the game, the way it makes it more exciting — I’m not sure it’s going to last, but I do think it has definitely changed some minds in the National League, which is obviously where the opposition to having a single set of rules has been centered over the years.”

Regarding the most radical rule change in 2020, Manfred suggested that placing a runner on second base in extra innings not only has a chance to stick beyond 2020 but has been well-received to this point. The concept has been polarizing, at best, among fans on social media — MLBTR readers were against it four-to-one back in June, though that was of course before seeing it put into practice — and has also been panned by some players.

“The extra-inning rule has been more positively received than I would have expected,” said the commissioner. “I told people, I said publicly before Covid, that I didn’t see this rule coming to the Major Leagues. I think it has a chance now. It’s been good. People see it as a strategic rule. It’s a whole different thought process that goes into handling the extra innings. I think it’s a good thing.”

Not every rule change is likely to stay in place. Manfred cast doubt on whether seven-inning doubleheaders would remain in place beyond the 2020 season, characterizing the traditional nine-inning length of games as something that isn’t likely to be altered on a permanent basis.

Looking further down the road, Manfred again touched on the topic of expansion to 32 teams. The commissioner has long been a proponent of adding two new teams to the league but acknowledged that the Covid-19 pandemic — the revenue losses and the time dedicated to navigating a season amid it — have likely pushed expansion down the road a ways.

“Expansion makes great sense for baseball, just based on the math,” said Manfred. “Fours work way better than fives. We have five-team divisions right now, 15 teams in each league. Those fives are rough when you go to make a schedule. … Getting to 32 [teams] is a really appealing idea from a schedule format perspective.”

Manfred didn’t delve into potential sites for new teams, though he did go back to a previously stated belief that international expansion beyond the U.S. and Canada would be good for the game’s growth, citing Mexico’s existing baseball culture as a “great opportunity” for the league to explore at some point.

Eventual changes to the rulebook, the structure of the season and the very composition of the league have long felt inevitable, but it’s certainly notable that the league has implemented this many changes to the 2020 season with the looming expiration of the 2016-21 collective bargaining agreement. The impending negotiations on a new CBA undoubtedly played a role in the MLBPA’s decision to only agree to expanded playoffs in 2020, as the expanded format can now be a point of leverage in future negotiations rather than the status quo heading into those talks.

Even if some of the league’s desired changes for the 2021 season don’t come to fruition on the heels of this year’s experimental campaign, don’t be surprised if (or when) they are once again major talking points as MLB and the MLBPA again come to the negotiating table in a year’s time.

Latest On Mets Video Incident, Apologies From Brodie Van Wagenen & Mets Ownership

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While Mets and Marlins players took part in a moving on-field statement before deciding to postpone tonight’s game, a bizarre incident was taking place behind the scenes that resulted in public statements being issued by, separately, Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen, Mets CEO and owner Fred Wilpon, his son and Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, and league commissioner Rob Manfred.

Less than two hours prior to game time, when it was still publicly unclear whether or not the teams would play, a video featuring Van Wagenen making some off-the-record comments was accidentally streamed to the Mets’ official website.  Van Wagenen said that the Mets weren’t going to play, and expressed incredulity at an apparent suggestion from Manfred’s office via Jeff Wilpon that the Mets and Marlins make their protest as planned but then return to the field an hour later to play the game.  “And I said, ’Jeff, that’s not happening. These guys are not playing.’….But that’s Rob’s instinct and Rob…at the leadership level, he doesn’t get it.  He just doesn’t get it,” Van Wagenen said on the video.

Details about how the video was mistakenly uploaded (or perhaps leaked, as Newsday’s Tim Healey noted that the 70-minute video was blank other than a few minutes that included Van Wagenen’s comments) remain scarce, though they naturally sent a storm of controversy around the baseball world.  Shortly after the Mets and Marlins left the field, the general manager released a statement saying he erred in thinking the idea came from Manfred.  Van Wagenen’s full statement:

“Jeff Wilpon called Commissioner Manfred this afternoon to notify him that our players voted not to play.  They discussed the challenges of rescheduling the game. Jeff proposed an idea of playing the game an hour later.  I misunderstood that this was the Commissioner’s idea.  In actuality, this was Jeff’s suggestion.  The players had already made their decision so I felt the suggestion was not helpful.  My frustration with the Commissioner was wrong and unfounded.  I apologize to the Commissioner for my disrespectful comments and poor judgement in inaccurately describing the contents of his private conversation with Jeff Wilpon.”

In a later interview with the New York Post and other media outlets, Van Wagenen expanded on his apology to include the Mets players.  “This conversation is about the players making a statement,” Van Wagenen said.  “This conversation is about recognizing the pain and the anguish that black people are experiencing every day in this country.  The fact that I’ve put myself and this organization in the conversation in a way that takes away from the real point, I’m disappointed in myself…and I accept responsibility for that.”

For his part, Manfred released his own statement later, with the Commissioner stating:

“Over the past two days, players on a number of Clubs have decided not to play games.  I have said both publicly and privately that I respect those decisions and support the need to address social injustice.  I have not attempted in any way to prevent players from expressing themselves by not playing, nor have I suggested any alternative form of protest to any Club personnel or any player.  Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.“

Adding to the surreal nature of the hot mic incident were a pair of statements from the Wilpons, which each included misspellings of Van Wagenen’s first name.

From Fred Wilpon: “I am very stressed and disappointed to learn tonight that our General Manager, Brodie Van Wagenen, made disrespectful and inaccurate comments about our Commissioner, a long-time close friend of mine.  I hold Rob in the highest regard and in no way are Brody’s remarks reflective of my views or the organization’s. Rob continues to be a great leader of Major League Baseball.  I apologize for any harm this incident has caused Rob.”

From Jeff Wilpon: “To clear up any misunderstandings, it was my suggestion to potentially look into playing the game later because of scheduling issues.  Brody’s misunderstanding of a private conversation was and is inexcusable.  We fully respect our players and the Marlins players decision to not play tonight and appreciate the sincerity of all those who wish to draw attention to social injustices and racial inequalities that must be addressed.  The entire Mets organization remains committed to creating meaningful change in our society.”

This situation has only intensified speculation that Van Wagenen’s days in the GM role may be numbered, even with New York still in the NL wild card race with a 13-16 record.  Van Wagenen’s contract runs through the 2022 season, though his future is thought to be uncertain given that the Wilpon family is preparing to sell the franchise (final bids are due by Monday) and a new ownership group might very well prefer to make its own pick for the general manager job.  The Mets had a solid 86-76 record in 2019, Van Wagenen’s first season running the Mets’ front office, but his tenure has been marked with the off-the-field drama that has come to define the team under the Wilpons’ ownership.

Rob Manfred On MLB’s Latest Coronavirus Issues

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COVID-19 has thrown a wrench into Major League Baseball’s plans throughout the past few months, and Monday was no different. The Marlins-Orioles and Yankees-Phillies games were both postponed because of the outbreak affecting the Miami club, which has seen 11 of the 33 players on its 30-man roster and three-man taxi squad test positive. The Marlins-O’s matchup on Tuesday will also be pushed back as a result, but commissioner Rob Manfred expressed confidence Monday that the 60-game season will still be able to take place.

“We think we can keep people safe and continue to play,” Manfred said (per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com and Bill Shakin of the Los Angeles Times), adding that the league hasn’t seriously considering shutting down the season at this point. For MLB to do that, it would require one of its teams “losing a number of players that rendered it completely non-competitive,” Manfred stated. 

Whether the Marlins are “non-competitive” in their current state isn’t fully clear, as the identities of their players who tested positive aren’t known right now. They certainly appear to be at a disadvantage, though. The Fish were scheduled to play the Orioles in Miami, but the two could instead square off in Baltimore on Wednesday if the Marlins’ coronavirus tests yield the desired results, according to Manfred (via Shaikin). Manfred expects that the latest results from Miami and Philadelphia (which hosted the Marlins over the weekend) will come in Monday night, and the league will issue an update Tuesday, Hoch tweets.

It’s hard to call this anything but a terrible outcome for MLB, whose season just kicked off and looks less certain than ever to finish, but Manfred’s taking an optimistic approach for the time being. He insisted (via Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald) that this is not “a nightmare situation” for the sport.

MLB Playoff Field Expands To 16 Teams For 2020 Season

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6:58pm: MLB has officially announced the 16-team playoff format and best-of-three Wild Card Series for 2020.

4:36pm: The league’s owners have ratified the agreement, Sherman tweets. Sixteen teams will make the playoffs this season.

3:27pm: ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that the top two teams in each division will qualify for the postseason under this format. The seventh and eighth teams in each league will be chosen based on the best overall records of the remaining teams. The Athletic’s Jayson Stark adds that all three first-round games of a series would be played at the higher seed’s home park, thus eliminating the need for a travel day.

3:00pm: Just hours before the first pitch of the 2020 season, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have reached an agreement on an expanded postseason field. ESPN’s Marly Rivera reports that the union has agreed to the proposal, which now needs only to be ratified by the owners. Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that will indeed happen (Twitter link), and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that there’ll be 16 teams as well as a best-of-three first round series (rather than a sudden-death Wild Card setting). The agreement covers only the 2020 season, per both Rivera and Sherman.

The postseason expansion comes with a $50MM player pool for the players, Nightengale further reports. That’s particularly notable given that in a traditional season, player postseason shares are derived solely from gate revenue and not from television ratings. Previous estimates on additional television revenue in an expanded postseason field suggested between $200-300MM could be generated by expanding to 16 teams, and ownership has agreed to share some of that windfall with the players’ side.

The potential ramifications here are broad reaching. It’s easy to envision this serving as a litmus test of sorts for future postseason expansion. The league has previously sought to push to 14 to 16 teams due to that considerable added revenue — the aforementioned revenue boost referenced only television money — and introducing it as a sort of experiment in an already anomalous season is perhaps a more palatable way of normalizing the change.

From a team vantage point, the impact this has on the trade deadline could be enormous. There have been plenty of questions regarding just how much clubs will be willing to surrender in order to acquire rental players in a 60-game season — particularly if the likeliest postseason scenario included a sudden-death Wild Card game. Now, clubs will at least be assured of a three-game series. Paired with the expanded number of fringe contenders a six-team expansion of the field, that could embolden some teams to be more aggressive buyers.

The greater number of postseason clubs not only widens the field of potential buyers but also narrows how many teams will be pure sellers. That could serve to up the demand for the trade assets on the few teams who are committed to selling off pieces. And it could lead to some dramatic last-minute decisions for teams that are on the cusp. Today’s brand of methodical, analytical GMs don’t make the emotional and even irrational plunges into transactions that once proliferated deadline season, but there’s a good chance we’ll again see some creative swaps of unexpected players. Complicated three-team trades have become prominent in recent years, and a radical change to the playoff format should only encourage creativity.

And what of the teams with trade candidates who have multiple seasons of club control remaining? At a time when clubs are reluctant to part with high-end talent to acquire 30-some games of a rental, a player controlled into 2021, 2022 or beyond becomes eminently more appealing. Matthew Boyd, Caleb Smith, Jon Gray, Francisco Lindor, Nolan Arenado and other controllable names who’ve been kicked about the rumor circuit in recent years will again be in demand. Depending on the status of those players’ teams at the halfway point of the season, the motivation to make a deal could increase. It’s worth reminding that only players in a team’s 60-man pool can be traded, so there are some clear restrictions in play, but the ripple effect here could be considerable.

MLB, MLBPA In Last-Minute Negotiations On Expanded 2020 Playoffs

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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are in the midst of some eleventh-hour negotiations about expanding the playoffs for the 2020 season, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweets. An agreement would need to be in place before the first pitch of tomorrow’s Nationals/Yankees season opener. It’s not clear exactly when the two sides resumed their talks on an expanded postseason, which was a focal point of their failed negotiations in May and June, but Heyman suggests that there is “optimism” on both sides that an agreement will be reached.

During this summer’s return-to-play negotiations, which did not result in a deal (leading commissioner Rob Manfred to implement a 60-game season under their March arrangement), the league sought to expand the postseason format from 10 to 16 teams. The initial hope was for the change to take effect for both 2020 and 2021, but doing so would’ve required an agreement to be bargained with the players’ union. When that didn’t happen, the postseason status quo of 10 teams remained in place.

Since the 60-game season was implemented, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark has expressed a willingness to resume talks with Manfred’s office should the league push for renewed talks. Exactly what concessions the league is willing to make for the players remains unclear in this newly rebooted set of talks. But given the potential for upwards of $300MM in additional television revenue under an expanded postseason format, it’s hardly a surprise that MLB is seeking one last go at hammering out an agreement.

Rob Manfred Reportedly “Jumped On” Mike Rizzo Over COVID Testing Comments

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The reigning World Series champion Nationals are among the teams whose COVID-19 testing hasn’t gone smoothly in Summer Camp. The club had to cancel its workout Monday because of a delay in receiving coronavirus results, and general manager Mike Rizzo voiced his dissatisfaction with the situation.

“Without accurate and timely testing it is simply not safe for us to continue with Summer Camp,” Rizzo said, in part. “Major League Baseball needs to work quickly to resolve issues with their process and their lab. Otherwise, Summer Camp and the 2020 Season are at risk.”

Rizzo’s reaction didn’t go over well with commissioner Rob Manfred, Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post reports. A source told Svrluga, “The commissioner jumped on him for that.”

While Manfred may be upset that Rizzo made his displeasure known publicly, the GM’s concerns are understandable, partially because the virus has taken such a significant toll on his club. Two of the Nationals’ players, whose identities aren’t publicly known, tested positive over the weekend, manager Dave Martinez announced (via Jessica Camerato of MLB.com). Even before then, the Nationals saw infielder Ryan Zimmerman, right-hander Joe Ross and catcher Welington Castillo opt out of playing this year on account of health-related worries. Additionally, closer Sean Doolittle – whose wife has a lung condition that puts her at higher risk of contracting the virus, and who’s not a sure bet to play this season – has expressed concern over the delay in results that the Nats have experienced.

Meanwhile, this could go down as the latest p.r. hit for Manfred, who – after months of sparring over season length with the union – implemented a 60-game schedule in June. Manfred went on to suggest last week that the league never thought playing more than 60 games in 2020 would be feasible, though he subsequently walked back those remarks.

Manfred Attempts To Clarify Comments On Length Of Season

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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred came under fire yesterday after saying in an interview on the Dan Patrick Show that a season longer than 60 games was never feasible. “The reality is we weren’t going to play more than 60 games no matter how the negotiations with the players went, or any other factor,” Manfred told Patrick.

The negative response to those comments was substantial, considering the March agreement between the league and players association expressly stipulated that two parties would make their “best efforts to play as many games as possible.” On Thursday, Manfred spoke to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale in an effort to clarify the point he claims to have been making:

My point was that no matter what happened with the union, the way things unfolded with the second spike, we would have ended up with only time for 60 games, anyway. As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that the course of the virus was going to dictate how many games we could play. … If we had started an 82-game season [beginning July 1], we would have had people in Arizona and Florida the time the second spike hit.

Major League Baseball’s initial proposal to the MLB Players Association was indeed for 82 games with an early-July start date, although that proposal came with additional pay cuts beyond the prorated salaries. The union steadfastly rejected further cuts. Their contention was that the March agreement clearly stated prorated salaries would be in place regardless of whether fans attended games, though neither executive director Tony Clark nor anyone else in the MLBPA could ever seem to explain why they then also allowed the inclusion of a clause indicating the two parties would “discuss in good faith the economic feasibility of playing games in the absence of spectators or at appropriate substitute neutral sites.”

Ultimately, MLB and the MLBPA failed to reach an agreement on the length of a season, which led Manfred to impose a season length with prorated salaries. MLB settled on a 60-game schedule — likely in an effort to avoid a grievance by implementing a season longer than ownership’s reportedly preferred 48 to 54 games.

In the days since that season length has been implemented, there’s been widespread speculation that the MLBPA nonetheless plans to file a grievance against the league — challenging the notion that MLB made its “best efforts to play as many games as possible.” Manfred’s Wednesday comments to Patrick were viewed by many as ammunition for said grievance, so it’s hardly a surprise to see him quickly endeavor to contextualize his words and distance himself from the surface-level sentiment.

That said, what Manfred cannot — or at least so far has not — explain is why the league took so long to get a proposal to the union in the first place. The March agreement was ratified on March 26, and there was already considerable discussion about playing games without spectators at that point. The first report that the league would seek additional pay cuts from players emerged way back on April 16, and yet the league didn’t actually put forth a proposal including those cuts until May 26. Even the league’s initial plan — a 50-50 revenue share that was leaked prior to its official proposal and publicly rejected by the union — wasn’t finalized by owners until May 11.

There’s been vocal criticism of both the union and the league throughout these unsightly and unyielding negotiations. One particularly popular (and still speculative) theory has been that the league deliberately prolonged negotiations to the point where the number of games sought by the union simply couldn’t fit into the schedule. The MLBPA’s initial proposal was for a 119-game season. Subsequent counter-offers featured seasons of 89 games and 70 games, all with prorated salaries. The league never gave consideration to any of those — just as the union gave zero consideration to any MLB proposals seeking pay reductions beyond prorated salaries.

The authenticity behind Manfred’s explanation and the motives of both the league and the MLBPA throughout this contentious process can be (and have been) debated ad nauseam. The end result is a 60-game season and a rebooted “Summer Camp” that will see players begin to report tomorrow — at a time when COVID-19 cases are again on the rise throughout much of the country. Given that context, perhaps the most telling quote from Manfred is not his comment on the length of season but rather another statement he provided to Nightengale:

“The reality is that we’re going to be lucky if we [get] 60 games now given the course of the virus.”

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