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For some reason, people keep asking MLB commissioner Rob Manfred about the looming threat of a lockout after the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. It’s so weird how this happens after you use an interview at the New York Times (by way of the Athletic) to say that there will be a lockout after the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement, but that’s just how the media works, am I right?
Manfred has spent the first half of 2025 pretending he didn’t say that lockouts should be considered the new normal, as just part of the process of negotiating a new CBA, that he didn’t liken them to “using a .22, as opposed to a shotgun or a nuclear weapon.” In February, Sportico relayed that Manfred had “tampered down his rhetoric” by saying that, “I’m not going to speculate how we’re going to negotiate with the PA. We’re a year away. I owe it to the owners to coalesce around our bargaining approach. And quite frankly I owe it to our fans not to get into this too early. It’s bad enough when you’re doing it and bargaining, and everyone is worried about it. We’re just not there yet.” Attempt number one at putting the cat back in the bag, basically.
Attempt number two was more about a refusal to speak on whether a salary cap was important to MLB in the upcoming bargaining, but that ties back to the threat of a lockout, as well: the two are inextricably tied together, as a demand for a salary cap is the kind of thing that would get the players to strike, and the league isn’t going to let things get to that point. Which is why Manfred sees lockouts as a normal, first-strike weapon to be wielded against the players. He might see it as a .22 rather than an atom bomb, but either way, MLB is firing at the first opportunity whether it’s actually necessary to do so or not. They’ve already done it once before, as anyone who remembers the lead-up to 2021’s lockout already knows.
And now we’re up to attempt number three to pretend as if a lockout isn’t a given, despite Manfred’s own words saying otherwise. At the Athletic, Evan Drellich reported that there’s been some regret at MLB over the break up of the league and broadcasting partner ESPN, related to the offers coming in for those games that will need a new home from 2026 through 2028. Here are a couple of paragraphs that stuck out to me; see if you can notice why.
MLB has a labor negotiation looming with the players after the 2026 season that has the potential to bring an offseason lockout and, if talks do not go well, canceled games in 2027. However, Manfred said fear of a work stoppage has not been an overlay in negotiations for the three years of media rights.
“We’re not committed or telling people there’s going to be a lockout after the end of the ’26 season,” Manfred said. “That all remains to be decided. And we’re just not having those kinds of conversations in the context of media.”
Interesting. So MLB’s potential broadcasting partners are maybe a little skittish about the possibility of not having access to the product they’re expecting to have on their schedule? I can’t imagine why that would be.
There was some criticism for Drellich not pushing back on what Manfred was saying back in January during that interview, given how egregious so much of what came out of Manfred’s mouth during that one-on-one was, but there was a method to that madness. Manfred, historically, will say the quiet part out loud when he’s feeling comfortable. When he’s furious, he can also let loose with something he shouldn’t say, but the conversation is going to end a lot sooner. There’s a reason I’ve said again and again that you don’t actually want a different commissioner, because they’re going to have the same goals but probably have better media training and be less obviously unlikable to players and fans. So, you let him run his mouth a bit, as Drellich did, only pushing back enough to get more out of him on the subject at hand, allowing for someone like me to read the result and and go “Hi Rob this is your lawyer speaking. I am advising you today to please keep posting this shit.”
Manfred’s inability to keep the quiet part quiet now has some immediate consequences, in the form of negotiating replacement television deals for these ESPN games and the Home Run Derby. Someone at NBC and Apple has the job of showing executives what the New York Times is saying, and that person had to let them know at some point that Manfred said a lockout was just the cost of doing business. A cost that these broadcasters aren’t going to pay. Or, at least, that they aren’t going to pay at the price MLB wants, given that the threat of a lockout can be used as leverage to facilitate bargaining… just not in the way Manfred meant when he said as much back in January.
Manfred can say that MLB isn’t bringing it up in these negotiations with media, but the threat is already out there. The Players Association is already publicly acting as if a lockout after the 2026 season is a given, and you don’t see executive director Tony Clark ever responding to rumors and such, only the tangible. So why wouldn’t NBC or whomever do the same?
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