Manfred: MLB will play ’20 season
Commissioner vows to impose shorter schedule if needed
Although negotiations between owners and the players union continue to feel contentious and without compromise, commissioner Rob Manfred guaranteed the return of Major League Baseball in 2020 — even if he must mandate a truncated season.
“We’re going to play baseball in 2020. One hundred percent,” Manfred said Wednesday on MLB Network.
“If it has to be under the March 26 agreement, if we get to that point in the calendar, so be it. But one way or the other, we’re playing Major League Baseball.”
Appearing on MLB Network and ESPN prior to Wednesday’s start of the 2020 draft, Manfred struck an optimistic but forceful tone. An agreement in March afforded him unilateral power to impose a shortened season of around 48 games in the absence of an accord.
Though Manfred acknowledged it would be a “disappointment” to impose such a curtailed season — one neither he nor the players want — the commissioner seemed more than willing to do so. He did not set a deadline for negotiations or when he might be forced to implement a short season.
“I would prefer to negotiate a new agreement with the MLBPA that gets us more games and resolves the issues that have separated us amicably,” Manfred told ESPN’s Karl Ravech. “But at the end of the day, we negotiated for the right in March to start the season on a number of games that we select in these particular circumstances, and if we have to, we’ll exercise that right.”
On Tuesday, the players union proposed an 89-game reg
ular season with full prorated salaries. League owners rejected it and are preparing a counterproposal, Manfred said.
“It will be another significant move in the players’ direction in terms of the salary issue that has kept us apart,” Manfred said. “We’re hopeful it will produce reciprocal movement from the players association, that we’ll see a number other than 100 percent on salary and a recognition that 89 games, given where we are in the calendar and the course of the pandemic, is not realistic.”
Players have demonstrated no willingness to budge from the March 26 agreement that promised them full prorated salaries if the season were played. Manfred said Wednesday that deal was brokered under the “mutual belief ” that fans would be allowed into stadiums.
Now, the sport stares at a season that, according to Manfred, will be “largely without fans, if not exclusively without fans.”
“We’ll make another proposal to them that’s consistent with the economic realities we’re looking at, including the fact that our revenues are going to be down over 70 percent, and hopefully we’ll find some flexibility on the other side and make an agreement,” Manfred said.
Recent rhetoric from the players and union chief Tony Clark suggests such flexibility regarding salary might be impossible.
Clark said in a statement last week that players “resoundingly rejected” any additional salary concessions. Union executive subcommittee member Max Scherzer said in late May there was “no justification to accept a second pay cut based upon the current information the union has received.” Manfred once envisioned a July 4 opening day. These protracted negotiations have killed it. Time continues to tick for a season that league owners are insistent will not extend into November while satisfying medical and contractual needs.
Broadcast partners do not want to move previously set postseason dates, and Manfred intimated on MLB Network that he did not want to disrupt that contractual obligation. Fear of a second wave of COVID-19 during the winter also exists, putting in peril any games in November.
“I don’t want to be responsible for the additional health risks associated with going later in the fall, the risk to not completing the season — the disaster that would be,” Manfred said on MLB Network. “The most prudent course for everyone is to follow the advice of the experts on this one.”
A deadline for the end of the season might spur progress to start it. Manfred lamented that “each and every day that goes by, we lose the capacity to play at least one game.” A counterproposal from the owners could arrive soon, but the draft Wednesday and Thursday might delay its delivery.
Whether the union moves from its unflappable stance on prorated salaries will dictate the next move — and whether Manfred must order an extremely truncated season few desire.
“I’ll be disappointed that we weren’t able to reach an agreement that allows us to play more games,” Manfred said. “I think at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we play major league baseball in 2020, and I can tell you, unequivocally, we are going to play major league baseball this year.”