Rob Manfred has found himself in hot water with MLB fans once again.
Since becoming commissioner in January 2015, Manfred has gone from one controversy to another, angering fans and players alike with his handling of different issues that have popped up, comments he's made over the years and attempts to change the game.
His handling of the collective bargaining agreement discussions has become the latest thorn for MLB fans and players as he's canceled games and attempted to pin blame on the players.
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The Sporting News is taking a look back at all Manfred's moments and controversies that have frustrated fans since he became commissioner.
Pace of play
MLB fans had been hoping to see pace of play improved, and one of Manfred's promises when he became commissioner was that he would help that aspect of the game. Heading into the 2015 season, his first as commissioner, Manfred instituted several rule changes to try to help speed up the game:
- Batters must keep one foot in the box at all times (with exceptions).
- Timers will track non-game action, including breaks and pitching changes.
- Pitchers have 30 seconds for warmup pitches.
- Batters need to step in the box with 20 seconds left on the timer, and pitchers will throw the ball as soon as the batter is ready. Fines will be assessed to those who violate the rules.
- Managers can call for instant replay from the dugout instead of walking out to the umpires.
Some of those rule changes were aggressive and caught fans by surprise. The biggest problem? They didn't work. According to Baseball Reference, the average time for a nine-inning game in 2015 was 2 hours and 56 minutes, an improvement from 2013 and 2014, but an increase over all but three previous seasons.
And since 2015, pace of play has only grown, with every season since then having averaged at least three hours for nine-inning games. In 2021, MLB had its longest average yet of 3 hours and 10 minutes.
Manfred has continued to institute new changes over the years, but nothing has seemed to work. The number of mound visits was cut down heading into 2018. In 2020, MLB announced each pitcher was mandated to face at least three batters unless the inning ended before that to reduce the number of pitching changes.
Despite Manfred's goal to speed up the game, it has not happened.
Different baseballs
And part of that can be attributed to a shared desire to both quicken the pace of the game and add extra offense at the same time.
MLB experienced a massive surge in offense not long after Manfred became commissioner, and over time reports have come out that the league has been seemingly constantly changing the baseball. A report from The Ringer in 2017 found that the baseballs used in 2015 had more bounce and that the seams were lower in 2016, though MLB at the time had said there were no changes being made to the balls.
However, a 2018 report from MLB confirmed that the baseballs had been changing, which helped contribute to a spike in home runs, though the league said it did not know what caused the change. In addition, many blamed the lower seams on an increase in pitcher blisters.
MORE: Are the baseballs juiced? Pitchers question "Home Run Derby" balls after record HR numbers
According to a 2021 report by Sports Illustrated, the baseballs continued to experience changes in 2018, when the ball was more even, then again in the 2019 regular season, when home runs spiked again. The baseballs were then different for the 2019 postseason, a fact MLB concluded in its report. Per that report, the baseballs were again changed in 2020 in a way that was deliberate, though MLB again denied that it used altered baseballs during the season.
Then, in 2021, a report from Business Insider came out finding that MLB had used two different baseballs in 2021, starting the campaign with baseballs that were more designed to reduce the surge in offense and others in the second half that were meant to bring back some scoring. Players, coaches and other team personnel were unaware of the changes to the baseballs. MLB cited production delays from Rawlings.
Before the findings of the report, Manfred had told Forbes that changes needed to be made to make the baseball more consistent.
"The only thing I’m prepared to say at this point and time is I do think that we need to see if we can make some changes that gives us a more predictable, consistent performance from the baseball," Manfred told Forbes.
The seemingly constant changes to the baseball have led to uncertainty among fans about whether the product they will see on the field coming into a given season is going to be more pitcher- or hitter-friendly, and has added an aspect to the game they never thought they'd to need to know.
Astros' cheating scandal
The first time Manfred had to deal with a major cheating scandal, he managed to make no one happy with the results.
The Astros were found to have used video technology to steal signs and alert batters about incoming pitches throughout the 2017 season, in which the team advanced to and won the World Series.
Fans expected some major penalties to be handed down after MLB's 2020 report concluded Houston had cheated. That was certainly not the case. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch were suspended for the 2020 season, the team lost four draft picks and was hit with a $5 million fine.
However, there were no player suspensions or fines. There were no punishments for players at all, in fact. The punishment they faced during the season came more from the response of fans on the road.
Fellow MLB players were furious that the Astros did not receive a stricter punishment, with Dodgers' outfielder Cody Bellinger saying that he felt he was robbed of a ring, Angels' star Mike Trout saying that he felt the players should have been punished, and Braves' outfielder Nick Markakis saying that the players needed a "beating."
MORE: MLB players rip Astros over sign-stealing scandal
Even LeBron James voiced his frustration over the lack of punishment toward the players.
"Yeah, I understand. I understand people's desire to have the players pay a price for what went on here," Manfred told ESPN's Karl Ravech. "I think if you watch the players, watch their faces when they have to deal with this issue publicly, they have paid a price. To think they're skipping down the road into spring training, happy, that's just a mischaracterization of where we are. Having said that, the desire to have actual discipline imposed on them, I understand it and in a perfect world it would have happened. We ended up where we ended up in pursuit of really, I think, the most important goal of getting the facts and getting them out there for people to know it."
'Piece of metal'
That February 2020 interview with Ravech led to one of his most controversial comments, however. Manfred defended the idea of allowing the Astros to keep their World Series title even as fans and players called for it to be removed.
Manfred said that no team had ever been stripped of a title and he didn't want to set any form of precedent for doing that over the Astros' cheating scandal. Then came this comment:
"The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act," Manfred said. "People will always know that something was different about the 2017 season, and whether we made that decision right or wrong, we undertook a thorough investigation, and had the intestinal fortitude to share the results of that investigation, even when those results were not very pretty."
That "piece of metal" that he is referring to is the Commissioner's Trophy, the pinnacle of baseball achievement and one of the oldest championship titles in North American sports.
Manfred was forced to apologize for his description of the World Series trophy, saying that he had referred to it "in a disrespectful way," according to ESPN.
"I want to apologize for that," Manfred said, per ESPN. "There's no excuse for it. I made a mistake. I was trying to make a point, but I should've made it in a more effective way, and again, I want to apologize for it."
COVID-19 pandemic
Manfred was forced to navigate the unprecedented challenges of overseeing MLB in the midst of a pandemic.
When the pandemic hit just before the 2020 season, he was given the ability to set up the regular season so long as the league and players' union negotiated in good faith. MLB and the MLBPA engaged in an ongoing back-and-forth over what a season during the pandemic would look like. There were discussions about how much to reduce the season, what the pay of the players should look like and just what would be involved in the safety protocols. By June, negotiations between the league and union had stalled, and Manfred installed a 60-game season.
That was just the beginning. The policy laid out by the league for the players was not strictly enforced as it only suggested players stay isolated when not at the stadium, and there were no compliance officers with the team to ensure players weren't breaking the rules.
Early in the shortened season, several outbreaks occurred, with 20 percent of the league at one point shut down because of the pandemic, according to Sports Illustrated.
Manfred threatened to pull the plug on the season, blaming the players for the rising COVID cases by saying that they needed to be better. However, players and managers said part of the issue with the outbreaks was that there was no social distancing that could happen given the larger roster sizes and relatively small dugouts, according to Sports Illustrated.
The league was able to finish its season, however, with the Dodgers eventually winning the 2020 World Series.
2021 All-Star Game relocation
Enter Manfred's most controversial year: 2021. It began in April when MLB announced it would move the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.
The move was in response to a controversial voting law passed by the state of Georgia that was met with widespread condemnation.
While many praised Manfred's decision to move the game out of Georgia, there were many others who bashed the decision, calling it a political move and viewed it as Manfred and MLB picking a side. Manfred described it as the "best way to demonstrate our values as a sport."
MORE: Why did MLB move the All-Star game?
In addition, the decision came in a year when Atlanta was set to celebrate the legacy of Hank Aaron, who had died the previous January. Manfred said the league would continue to donate money to local Atlanta charities and honor Aaron's legacy at the All-Star Game.
The decision to move the All-Star Game caused many Braves fans to celebrate Atlanta's win in the World Series even more.
Spider Tack
Another issue with the baseball popped up in 2021, but this time it wasn't the makeup of the ball but rather what players added to it.
In June, the league decided abruptly to crack down on the use of foreign substances, particularly Spider Tack, that was being applied to the baseballs. This even included more common mixtures such as sunscreen and sweat that are strictly to help improve the grip for pitchers.
All of a sudden, players had to hand over their hats, gloves and belts to umpires for examinations, and if anything was spotted, the players would be ejected from the game and suspended.
MORE: What to know about MLB's 'crisis' with pitchers and foreign substances
Pitchers have long used those substances to improve grip on the baseball. While Spider Tack was perhaps a substance too far, the others have been common practice for years.
The sudden change meant that nearly all players had to adjust to life without the gripping help. Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow stopped using sunscreen to help with his pitches for fear of a suspension, and he wound up injured. He said he believed the change contributed to the injury, which later necessitated Tommy John surgery.
While some batters were happy about the move, pitchers widely disapproved, saying that the league was making an abrupt change in the middle of the season that drastically disrupted how many of them had been pitching throughout the year.
Collective bargaining agreement negotiations
That brings us to Manfred's latest controversy: collective-bargaining.
Back on Dec. 2, Major League Baseball officially locked out the players as the old CBA expired and the two sides had yet to come to an agreement. Manfred said the league believed it was a necessary step to "drive the process forward to an agreement." He said the league was "ready to bargain whenever the Players Association wants to bargain."
It wasn't until Jan. 13 that the two sides had another discussion outside of a brief meeting in which there were no major discussions on Dec. 20. That's a gap of 43 days without meaningful discussion. And even when they returned, it wasn't until February that talks actually began to ratchet up.
By that point, MLB had declared an arbitrary Feb. 28 deadline to reach an agreement. On Feb. 28, after extensive talks, the deadline was moved back a day, only for it to ultimately come and go without a deal anyway.
MORE: MLB players blast Rob Manfred for lockout continuing
In his news conference after the deadline, Manfred made plenty of claims, ultimately attempting to place blame on the players. He said the league had faced financial difficulty over the past five seasons — despite the league bringing in more money than ever — and said the league had no choice but to cancel games. He did this while smiling and laughing during the press conference.
why is he smiling pic.twitter.com/BYHFTlF1wG
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) March 1, 2022
Players widely panned the commissioner and accused him of lying about the negotiations, re-affirming their desire to return to the field. At this point, it's anyone's guess when that will happen.
