Rob Manfred Changes Tune on “100%” Guarantee

Leading up to the MLB Draft, commissioner Rob Manfred threw out a few Joe Namath-esque guarantees about the chances of a 2020 MLB season. “100 percent,” he told Karl Ravech confidently after the ESPN host asked for a specific percent.

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Less than a week later, and with MLB players ending negotiations, that number has changed.

In a conversation with longtime ESPNer Mike Greenberg on Monday, Manfred said he’s “not confident” about a season “as long as there’s no dialogue.”

The MLBPA ended negotiations after several proposals from the league with “hundreds of millions of dollars of additional pay reductions.”

The last deal the MLBPA offered (on June 9th) was for an 89-game season with no additional paycuts. The MLB then countered with their latest proposal — the one that caused negotiations to stall — of 72 games and 70-83-percent prorated salaries.

“It unfortunately appears that further dialogue with the league would be futile,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a statement. “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.”

The sides agreed on March 26th that the league could set a schedule without pay reductions, so that’s what Clark was referring to. However, Manfred claimed that union’s “top lawyer” was telling players and reporters the MLBPA would file a grievance for “an additional billion dollars” after they set a schedule.

“I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were gonna pay the players’ full prorated salary, that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26,” Manfred told ESPN. “Unfortunately, over the weekend, while Tony Clark was declaring his desire to get back to work, the union’s top lawyer was out telling reporters, players and eventually getting back to owners that as soon as we issued a schedule — as they requested — they intended to file a grievance claiming they were entitled to an additional billion dollars. Obviously, that sort of bad-faith tactic makes it extremely difficult to move forward in these circumstances.”

(via ESPN)

Long story short, it’s a mess. Owners kept coming back with offers so similar to one another, barely moving toward the players. You can see a timeline here with all the offers. The MLBPA, on the other hand, did compromise, at least in my opinion, cutting 25 games off their first offer. The league’s offers were all basically the same end sum with different games/salaries.

CBS Sports put it well by saying the league “ignored the sport’s best interests” and “blew its chance” to grow the sport.