Tag: Rob Manfred

Notes: Aramark uses Fenway scabs, Philles-Manfred meeting gets ‘heated’

Local 26 struck, Aramark scabbed, while Manfred goes to Philly.

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Fenway workers strike, but that doesn’t stop Aramark

On Friday, UNITE HERE Local 26 and Aramark failed to reach an agreement before the noon deadline, and the union went on strike as promised. This means that Fenway Park’s concession workers stood outside of the stadium rather than within it, making their demands known to attendees as they headed toward the stadium.

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MLBPA’s Bruce Meyer speaks on potential lockout

The MLBPA speaks up on the threat of a lockout once more.

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The MLB Players Association has spoken up on the league’s threat of a lockout once again, this time in an interview with Foul Territory’s Scott Braun. MLBPA deputy executive director Bruce Meyer joined the show, and was asked about Rob Manfred’s comments earlier in the year, on the inevitability of a lockout.

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Notes: ESPN deal, Rob Manfred talks salary cap again

ESPN doesn’t seem to believe that the MLB relationship is over after 2025, and Rob Manfred is trying to put the cat back in the bag again.

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ESPN opted out of the final three years of their national broadcasting deal with MLB, which wasn’t a surprise, necessarily, especially given the league’s devaluing of their own product in deals with (arguably) Apple and (inarguably) Roku. Over at Sports Business Journal, though, comes sourced word from ESPN that they don’t see this as the end of the relationship between the two after 2025.

Someone might want to let MLB know about that, since the league has been publicly airing its grievances with the worldwide leader and its coverage — or lack thereof — of MLB’s games. You’ll also find plenty of fans who aren’t broken up about ESPN ending things, since they, a little too regularly, act like they’re embarrassed to be covering baseball games. Which doesn’t do much for growing the game, no?

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Notes: Jackie Robinson, Pirates debt, MLB broadcasts

A response to the federal government trying to erase Jackie Robinson, another responding to claim the Pirates are in debt, actually, and Rob Manfred’s latest on MLB’s broadcast plans.

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I had no inside knowledge that Steven Goldman would have a reaction to the Department of Defense briefly taking down Jackie Robinson’s military history to relabel it as “DEI,” but I knew he was good for it, and that it would appear if I would only be patient.

The reward for that patience was significant: Goldman wrote a wonderful rebuttal, explanation, whatever you want to call it to what went into the decision to remove Robinson, the history behind what made his being there in the first place such a significant deal, and some strong jabs at Thomas Jefferson’s trying-to-have-it-both-ways routine, for good measure.

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The Rays won’t have a new stadium in St. Petersburg after all

The Rays are likely to stay in the Tampa region, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be in St. Petersburg.

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Earlier this week, at Baseball Prospectus, a piece of mine published explaining why it was that commissioner Rob Manfred — along with some team owners — were pressuring Stu Sternberg to sell the Rays. This one is free to read with an email login, so you can check out the whole thing if you’d like, but the key idea to take from it for right this second is that Sternberg was very likely to blow up the stadium deal he had been working on with St. Petersburg practically forever, because he only realized it was a bad deal for the Rays after agreeing to it.

Over the weekend, The Athletic reported that Manfred and Co. would even go so far as to use collective bargaining to pull a reverse A’s on Sternberg, if he couldn’t be convinced to sell the team before then. Basically, rather than using bargained and temporary revenue-sharing funds to help the Rays along in their search, like happened with the A’s, the other owners would instead use the CBA to throttle the Rays’ share of the revenue. If Sternberg barely has the funds he needs to operate the team at a high level now, or to pay for the increased costs that the delay in coming to a final agreement supposedly created, then having his revenue-sharing checks cut down was not going to help matters.

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Tony Clark, Rob Manfred comment on likely 2026 lockout

Rob Manfred wants to pretend he didn’t say the things he said, but hey, guess what.

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With spring training well underway and games that count in the standings a few weeks off, MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark has been making the rounds. On Friday, he spoke to a few media members regarding the possibility of a lockout in 2026, when the current collective bargaining agreement ends. The union is historically quiet when it comes to speaking publicly about what’s going on with negotiations and the like — that’s actually how these things are supposed to go, you know, but given the incessant leaks and proclamations from the ownership side, you’d never know it — however, Clark had something to say this time around, with good reason:

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Notes: Brewers and the World Series, A’s in Vegas timetable

The owner of the Brewers had a quote you just have to stare at for a minute, and Rob Manfred talks about the projected A’s future

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Now here’s a fun quote that surely won’t come back to haunt Brewers’ principal owner Mark Attanasio:

“Is my job to win a World Series,” Attanasio said, “or is my job to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together?”

That’s from a Bob Nightengale story over at USA Today, on why the Brewers refuse to spend “despite decade of NL Central domination.” First off, dominating the NL Central is a lot like an elementary gym teacher kicking the ass of every kindergartener at basketball. It doesn’t mean he stands a chance against a real team. Second, oh boy, Mark Attanasio.

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Ignore Rob Manfred: lockouts exist to preempt strikes

Lockouts are a necessity for one thing only, and you’re not going to hear Rob Manfred say what that is.

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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred can say whatever he wants about the need for a lockout as something of a routine part of collective bargaining. And he certainly has, as evidenced by a recent interview with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. A pertinent excerpt:

But one action looks virtually certain. Manfred said an offseason lockout, as there was in 2021-22, should be considered the new norm.

“In a bizarre way, it’s actually a positive,” he said. “There is leverage associated with an offseason lockout and the process of collective bargaining under the NLRA works based on leverage. The great thing about offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists gets applied between the bargaining parties.”

To which MLBPA executive director Tony Clark’s responded by saying that, “Players know from first-hand experience that a lockout is neither routine nor positive… It’s a weapon, plain and simple, implemented to pressure players and their families by taking away a player’s ability to work.”

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Notes: Diamond isn’t Diamond now, an A’s reminder, Best of BP

A little holiday round-up to start the new year.

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Happy New Year! Sure, that was a couple of days back, but this is the first Marvin Miller’s Mustache of 2025, so it’s fitting all the same. (Sometimes I forget that’s what I ended up naming this newsletter, too, so please enjoy this reminder if you’d forgotten about that change from last year.)

Let’s kick things off with some notes from the holiday break.

Continue reading “Notes: Diamond isn’t Diamond now, an A’s reminder, Best of BP”

Time skip

More teams are spending the resources they have even as others run in place, the next CBA is Manfred’s last, with his final major act likely being a landscape-altering broadcasting deal. Pieces are starting to come together that will still be in play at the end of the decade.

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The Juan Soto deal has me thinking about the future a bit. Not Soto’s future, but what’s going on in MLB. You’ll have to excuse me for using this space to get some thoughts down and further organize them, but it’ll end up resulting in another piece or two down the line once that’s all done.

Event: The Dodgers spend and spend some more, deferring even more money, and are projected for a $279 million Opening Day payroll after kicking off 2024 at $267 million — please recall that Shohei Ohtani was paid just $2 million in 2024, with the other $68 million in the deal deferred until the playing time portion of the contract expires for 2034. The Dodgers ranked third in payroll, but second for luxury tax implications, as more of Ohtani’s deal counts towards that figure in the present than in the figure calculated with actual dollars.

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