Rob Manfred's flip-flop on MLB season seen by players as stalling tactic, more bad-faith negotiating

Tom Gatto

Rob Manfred's flip-flop on MLB season seen by players as stalling tactic, more bad-faith negotiating image

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred isn't finished negotiating through the media, a sign that club owners are willing to continue their fight with players over money while the 2020 season remains stalled by the coronavirus pandemic. And in some players' minds, Manfred is ready to keep up the public campaign until those owners, aka his bosses, get their preferred outcome: maximum payroll savings.

That's the impression, at least, Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer and Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich got from Manfred telling ESPN's Mike Greenberg on Monday that he's "not confident" there will be a 2020 season. Just last week, Manfred said before the MLB Draft he was "100 percent" confident a season would be played.

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As Bauer asked on Twitter, "What changed between those statements?" His answer was that Manfred, and by extension the owners, just don't want to pay players for anything more than one-third of a 162-game season so as to protect their bottom lines.

Manfred's comment came after MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark, frustrated over a lack of progress in negotiations to start the season, told MLB to "tell us when and where" the season would start.

Manfred can unilaterally set a season length under the terms of a March agreement between players and owners that establishes players' play and safety conditions for starting the season. Players would see Manfred setting a 50-game season now as bad-faith negotiating.

To that end, The Associated Press reported Monday that MLB told the MLBPA in a letter that it wouldn't start the season unless the union agreed to not file a grievance claiming the owners violated the March agreement. In Bauer's mind, that threat and Manfred's comments are a stalling tactic until Manfred and the owners can safely set a two-month regular season that would end on Sept. 27.

Yelich, after reading Bauer's thread, came to the same conclusion:

Clark weighed in after those statements by claiming Manfred and the owners are continuing to negotiate in bad faith:

No new negotiations are planned after the sides rejected each other's most recent proposals, a development that led to Clark's "when and where" comment.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.