Rob Manfred making MLB lockout all about himself the longer it drags out

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rob Manfred believes in Rob Manfred. 

“In the history of baseball, the only person who has made a labor agreement without a dispute, and I did four of them, was me,” the baseball commissioner said Thursday morning. “Somehow, during those four negotiations, players and union representatives figured out a way to trust me enough to make a deal. I’m the same person today as I was in 1998, when I took that labor job.” 

Each day that Manfred’s lockout remains in place, with spring training obviously delayed (despite no official confirmation), this Major League Baseball labor dispute becomes more about him. 

It becomes about his ability to make the industry’s trains run on time (his primary selling point in his winning effort to succeed Bud Selig in 2014) as his very existence has turned into a galvanizing force for the players. 

It becomes about his future atop a sport that has experienced more turbulence in the past two years than Joe Rogan’s podcast, albeit much of it no one’s fault. Because if missing regular-season games would be “a disastrous outcome for this industry,” as Manfred said in his news conference upon the conclusion of the owners’ meetings, then the stakes clearly are high for him. Restarting Saturday, for the next bargaining session, he and his side have much to do to avert disaster and affirm the commissioner’s faith in himself and his optimistic assertion Thursday that “we will have an agreement in time to play our regular schedule,” with Opening Day slated for March 31. 

“It is part of my job to get us to an agreement that keeps the game on the field,” Manfred said. “I take that responsibility really seriously.” 

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Manfred said of the players, qualifying it as his perspective, that, “It’s been a mismatch between rhetoric and proposals.” You could easily say the same, from a different perspective, of the owners. Like someone who vows a conversion to Judaism and starts the victory lap after merely giving up bacon, the owners have included a number of interesting Cracker Jack prizes in their proposals, sweeteners that will improve player life at the margins without introducing the sort of fundamental change that would end this dispute. The universal DH is cool … for Nelson Cruz and a few other guys. Eliminating direct compensation for free agents would help a handful of players each season — which, to be fair, never deterred the players from complaining endlessly about it. 

The gains for players would be “in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Manfred said. Color me skeptical, as the owners’ current proposal also features increased penalties for exceeding the luxury-tax threshold, which would increase only modestly. That detail should curb the enthusiasm of titans such as the Yankees, Dodgers and, I’d bet after Steve Cohen’s credibility-building spending spree, the Mets. 

Manfred stated the teams want to run a four-week spring training, at minimum (the delay of camps need not be announced for another 10 days or so, given that the exhibition-game schedule is set to begin Feb. 26), the end of this month stands as the rough deadline to reach an agreement. An air of optimism arose from the owners on Thursday as the lords of the manor dispersed. We’ll see Saturday, when Manfred’s group unveils its latest counter, whether the players share that good cheer. 

Those actual negotiating sessions have turned into this sport’s kryptonite. As much as Manfred touts his deal-making abilities, the two sides, employing the same principals, couldn’t stand each other in 2020, making it extremely difficult to get back on the field after the COVID-19 shutdown. That heat and tension has reemerged for this sequel. 

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“We did every negotiation, Michael [Weiner] and I, in a certain way,” Manfred said, referring to the former MLB Players Association director, who died in 2013. “2020 and this negotiation have been a little different, maybe a lot different, than those negotiations. That’s true.” 

The world would be a better place in countless ways had a brain tumor not ended Weiner’s life at 51. Alas, if Weiner’s successor, Tony Clark, and Clark’s deputy, Bruce Meyer, who came aboard after Clark’s first collective bargaining agreement negotiations went terribly in 2016, don’t click anywhere as easily with Manfred and his deputy Dan Halem, it’s the commissioner’s primary obligation to somehow get to “I do.” 

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When Manfred answers a query about why the two sides didn’t speak substantively for six weeks after his lockout with “The phones work two ways,” as he did Thursday, that rallies the players, who weren’t the ones who shut down the sport. 

When the commissioner contends that the return on buying a baseball team “is below what you get in the stock market, with a lot more risk,” again on Thursday, that rolls eyes across the player universe. As if owning a baseball team doesn’t yield massive ancillary benefits from financial to social to philanthropic to legacy-building? Come on, now. 

“We’re going to make a good-faith, positive proposal in an effort to move the process forward,” Manfred said about the session set for Saturday. “Whether or not that happens, I don’t know.” 

We’ll know soon enough whether the dealmaker can sustain his perfect run, and whether his bosses stop or don’t stop believing in Manfred.