Manfred Stinks... What Do You Want From Me?

I’ve been ranting about Rob Manfred for ages, and frankly, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. The guy is reshaping baseball in ways that make purists want to rip their hair out. But does he care? Absolutely not. He knows baseball is America’s pastime, and as long as fans keep shelling out cash for tickets and merch, he can ignore the noise.

And speaking of greed—I can’t stand it. I don’t love when athletes start demanding insane contracts, like Juan Soto asking for nearly a billion dollars. It changes people. They forget why they picked up a bat in the first place. But at the same time, I respect it. You have to know your worth. The problem is, the entire salary system has spiraled into absolute absurdity. But I digress.

Back to torching Manfred—ugh.

So now, Manfred is dropping hints about another lockout. He thinks of it as a “necessary tool” to keep negotiations moving without ruining the regular season. His reasoning? Players don’t get paid in the offseason, so it’s “not painful.”

Well, that take did not sit well with the players’ union.

Tony Clark wasted no time shutting that down, making it clear that the only people pushing for a lockout are Manfred and his cronies. Instead, he emphasized the importance of negotiating in “good faith,” which, by law, means actually trying to reach a deal—not just flexing power moves.

“Unless I am mistaken, the league has come out and said there’s going to be a work stoppage,” Clark said after meeting with the San Francisco Giants players at Scottsdale Stadium. “So, I don’t think I’m speaking out of school in that regard.”

Clark’s frustration is based on Manfred’s own words, including comments he made to The Athletic in January, suggesting that offseason lockouts aren’t necessarily a bad thing. If you read Marc Normandin—who I do—you’ll see he wasn’t buying that nonsense:

“Manfred, if you’ll recall, talked about the usefulness of a lockout to getting the conversation going and forcing bargaining to happen. Which is a lie, of course, especially when, at the time of the comments, the league and PA were over a year from even beginning their negotiations in earnest. If the league wants to bargain, then they can just do that—they don’t need to wait until the existing CBA has expired so they can lock the players out and force the issue. Maybe they’ve forgotten as much, though, since they very intentionally avoided taking bargaining seriously in 2021 until the CBA had expired and they could enact their plan of a lockout, as they attempted to force the players to take a bad deal while the clock ticked away the days until the season was supposed to open.”

Manfred’s latest comments bring back unpleasant memories of the infamous 2021 lockout—a 99-day disaster, the longest in MLB history. It delayed Opening Day, wiped out nearly 100 spring training games, and left players fuming as they fought for higher minimum salaries and fairer revenue-sharing. The major sticking points? Expanded playoffs and the competitive balance tax.

Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa captured the whole mess perfectly back then: “I really don’t want to think about the possibility of a lockout but…I believe CBA talks were going to go sideways anyway, so this only makes it worse. The players were already frustrated with Manfred unilaterally deciding how to handle last season due to the pandemic, so if 2022 Spring Training starts on time, it will be a miracle.”

And that’s the crux of the problem—Manfred and the players are never on the same page. Not even close. And that’s a huge issue. Right now, I have to side with Tony Clark and the players. Manfred talks like he’s just making neutral observations but come on—we all know exactly what he’s saying.

Marc Normandin put it best: “Rob Manfred wants to pretend he didn’t say the things he said, but hey, guess what.”

Why are we still stuck with this guy as commissioner?

Like This? READ THIS: 

THE PLAYER’S REBELLION AGAINST ROB MANFRED IN FULL SWING!

Source: http://bleedingyankeeblue.blogspot.com/2025/03/manfred-stinks-what-do-you-want-from-me.html