Shortening the schedule would mean less pay, Manfred says

MASN dispute will go back to committee, he predicts

If baseball players want to shorten the schedule, management says they should accept a reduction in pay.

Tired from travel in an era that frequently has quick turnarounds after overnight flights, players are seeking changes in collective bargaining. The regular-season schedule increased from 154 games to 162 in the American League in 1961 and the National League the following year, and playing 162 games in 183 days has left little flexibility.

“There are ways to produce more off days in the schedule. Some of those have very significant economic ramifications,” commissioner Rob Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “If in fact we are going to go down those roads, those economic ramifications are going to have to be shared by all of the relevant parties. You want to work less, usually you get paid less.”

Union head Tony Clark, a former All-Star first baseman, says the sport currently is “not putting players or giving the clubs and their players the best opportunity to play every day at a high level throughout the course of the season.” He said the grind is so difficult that players need to take days off to give their bodies time to recover.

’’I don’t agree that there would need to be a discussion about a loss of salary or a rollback of salaries,” Clark said. “If there is a lessening of the games and we put players in the position where playing whatever number of games are in that season, they’re able to play, the value of every game goes up as well.”

Manfred commented on other matters Tuesday:

He said he thinks the Orioles eventually will be forced to take their television dispute with the Washington Nationals back to a committee of baseball executives.

In November, New York Supreme Court Justice Lawrence K. Marks threw out an arbitration decision that said the MidAtlantic Sports Network, which is controlled by the Orioles, owes the Nationals about $298 million for the team’s 2012-2016 television rights.

MASN was established in March 2005 after the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington and became the Nationals, moving into what had been Baltimore’s exclusive broadcast territory since 1972.

The Orioles were given a supermajority partnership interest in MASN, and when the parties could not agree on a rights fee for 2012-2016, they appeared in April 2012 before baseball’s three-man Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee, as required in the MASN agreement.

Marks tossed aside the RSCD’s decision, but didn’t tell the sides what to do next. On Monday he issued a stay preventing the RSDC from holding a rehearing, pending determinations of appeals in New York courts.

“The Baltimore club agreed that if they couldn’t negotiate a rights fee with the Washington club, it was going to be decided by the RSDC,” Manfred said Tuesday.

“That’s what the contract says. I’m a big believer in contracts, and I am a big believer that whatever flotsam and jetsam goes on in the meantime, that contract is ultimately going to be enforced. That’s what they agreed to.”

Manfred said a lawsuit filed by minor league players claiming they don’t earn the minimum wage “is not a dollars-and-cents issue.”

Some minor leaguers earn as little as $1,100 a month, The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco in 2014, could go to trial next year.

Manfred says the suit is about “the irrationality of the application of traditional workplace overtime rules to minor league baseball players. It just makes no sense. I want to take extra BP. Am I working, or am I not working?”

With home runs up to a level not seen since the height of the steroids era, he said he is not worried that performanceenhancing drugs might be a reason for the increase.

There was an average of nearly 2.32 home runs per game before the All-Star break, up from 1.90 in the first half of last year and the most before the break since 2.56 in 2000.

“The increase in the number of home runs takes place against a very, very different backdrop,” Manfred told the baseball writers on Tuesday. “It takes place against the backdrop where Major League Baseball does 22,000 drug tests a year.”

He said the firing of Fredi Gonzalez by the Atlanta Braves in May has left Major League Baseball sensitive to the lack of Latino managers.

“The absence of a Latino manager is glaring,” Manfred said.

Among 864 players on Opening Day rosters, disabled lists and the restricted list, 82 were born in the Dominican Republic, 63 in Venezuela, 23 in Cuba and 17 in Puerto Rico.