Philadelphia (CNN) — There was a funny moment when MLB commissioner Rob Manfred addressed the media before the All-Star Game this week.
Well, OK, funny might be too strong; but by the standards of a Baseball Writers Association of America meeting it was pretty good.
Asked about President Donald Trump weighing in on the ongoing MLB labor negotiations, Manfred made a noise acknowledging that this was fraught territory – the president, not the labor battle, which predictably dominated the press conference.
“This is where Pat (Courtney) always tells me to take a minute,” Manfred said, referencing his longtime chief communications officer. “So I’m going to take a minute.”
People laughed. It was a cheeky recognition that Manfred has not always been so careful and that has gotten him into some trouble. It is neither unexpected nor nefarious that the commissioner of a major sports league would have a carefully considered communications strategy.
But this memorable acknowledgement of such – complete with a winking reference to how it hasn’t always been Manfred’s strong suit – made me hyper cognizant of how else that was manifesting. The league has a plan for how to handle talking publicly about the negotiation for the next collective bargaining agreement between the league and players, which is essentially guaranteed to result in a lockout this offseason.
It includes Manfred taking a minute before saying anything into a microphone when dealing with especially thorny subjects. What else?
The commissioner showed up to field inquiries about what is a deeply unpleasant and unpopular labor battle with a party line of doing it all for the fans.
Manfred said the phrase “listen to fans” or “listening to fans” six times in response to a range of questions across 40 minutes. But it’s important to understand that even if he was completely well-intentioned, when he gets to the bargaining table, Manfred doesn’t represent the fans and he doesn’t even represent the best interests of baseball.
He represents the owners.
Fans don’t have a seat at the table and labor negotiations are largely about divvying up money between management and the workforce. The specifics of the CBA negotiation can be as complicated as you’re willing to make them with the granular proposals about revenue sharing and compensatory draft picks.
But the topline disagreement at this juncture is as follows: The owners, collectively considered to be the league, want a salary cap so they can have cost certainty; the players do not want a salary cap so they can receive something closer to market value for their services.
It’s not really worth wasting any energy worrying about which side is greedier. A baseball CBA negotiation doesn’t concern itself with whether teachers or police officers deserve to be paid better than shortstops or, uh, the son of a clothing retail founder. And ticket prices are not dictated by the eye-popping contracts awarded to players. The industry is, indeed, a lucrative one, and the various parties want to benefit themselves and their constituents.
And yet, one of the features that has defined the early stages of bargaining is how public both sides are being.
Bruce Meyer, the union’s lead negotiator who was promoted from deputy director to interim director following the ouster of Tony Clark earlier this year, has held periodic press conferences to discuss incremental proposal exchanges. (He also made a cheeky reference in talking to the BBWAA about his perpetual availability to talk to reporters, saying, “I’m on my devices probably way more than I should be, and I try to respond to any inquiries pretty much immediately.”)
But the league has gone beyond explaining its side to the intermediaries known as the media. MLB is taking its pitch to fans directly – posting its own proposals directly to social media with a favorable spin, employing a reporter to “analyze” even the most ambitious opening salvos with the conclusion that they’re “a grand bargain,” and running advertisements on MLB.tv explicitly extolling the virtues of a salary cap.
Those videos present a cap as what fans want. Or, at least, they want baseball to have more “parity” and be more “equitable,” which the ad implies is directly correlated with implementing a cap. Both spots in the campaign include a build up to MLB insisting once again that it is “listening.”
Now, as Meyer pointed out, if this is really what fans want, why would MLB have to market it back to them? It’s a worthy question (as is his other: Are they listening when fans call for owners to “sell the team”?) But in truth I’m sure some segment of fans do want a salary cap. Others do not. They are not a monolith.
What stands out to me is that the campaign seems to be just as much about convincing fans that MLB is acting in their best interest – going so far as to take fan desire as a mandate – as it is about selling them on the merits of a salary cap.
No commissioner is ever all that popular, but Manfred has enjoyed a bit of a glow-up in fan estimation recently. Years of testing and tinkering at the minor league level has given way to well-received rule changes.
In 2023, MLB implemented, along with a slate of other rules designed to encourage on-field action, the pitch clock, which has reduced deadtime in the game. The Automated Ball-Strike system debuted this season to widespread acclaim. Manfred has explicitly set his sights on the scourge that is “blackouts” with a stated desire to centralize local broadcasts in-house at MLB.
These changes – along with, crucially, incredible performances from the players themselves and compelling matchups that have included the boogeyman Dodgers in both of the last two World Series – have been a boon to the game. Baseball is thriving. Attendance is up. The All-Star Game ratings were up.
“Momentum in the game is a great thing,” Manfred told reporters. “We got that momentum by listening to fans and making changes that, candidly, the MLBPA was not interested in. Those changes have paid off in terms of creating that momentum. And the best way to lose momentum is to stand still. We’re doing exactly the same thing that we did with the rule changes. We’re listening to our fans.”
The league’s public posturing is something along the lines of: From the league that brought you the highly popular pitch clock and robo umps comes a salary cap! You wanted those, you like those, you want this, too.
The thing people most want to know about sports labor fights is: Which side cares about the fans more? As referenced above, neither side is actively representing fan interest. But both sides want fans to continue to care and continue to pay for the product. The league especially – and especially now, in advance of taking a national TV package to market for 2028 – is invested in ensuring fan interest does not wane.
Their task, then, is to navigate what is likely to be an ugly, protracted battle in which the league will be in direct opposition to the players people pay to see. The guys whose names fans wear on their backs. MLB needs to crush them (in a business sense) without squashing fan enthusiasm. The tactic they’ve seemed to settle on is one in which they are champions of the fans. Whatever mudslinging to come, it’s all in service of a righteous cause.
I don’t think MLB is actually letting fan opinion influence what happens at the bargaining table, as it claims. I think it doesn’t want what happens at the bargaining table to influence fan opinion.
The-CNN-Wire
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