MLB commissioner Rob Manfred receives four-year extension into 2029
Rob Manfred’s reign as Major League Baseball commissioner has been most notable for its rapid rate of change, achieved through a hard-charging style and accompanied by a dogged determination to keep his bosses – the game’s 30 franchise owners – satisfied.
That recipe has earned Manfred a four-year contract extension which expires in January 2029, MLB announced on Wednesday.
MLB’s owners voted to keep Manfred in the game’s most influential job through the 2028 season, stretching his reign to nearly 15 years and into the realm of the game’s longest-running chief officers.
Manfred survived an occasionally contentious election process – multiple ballots were needed to reach the 23 votes from owners – to gain approval as baseball’s 10th commissioner in August 2014. He assumed office in January 2015 and has presided over arguably the game’s most dizzying and transformative period in its modern history.
His most recent, radical directive – a pitch clock that for the first time put the timeless game on a stopwatch at the highest level – has been met with almost unanimously positive reviews. Yet that triumph has been accompanied by recent warts – shepherding the pending relocation of the Oakland Athletics and spearheading a 99-day lockout that delayed the 2022 season – that compel fans to associate the commissioner’s office with anything but the best interests of the game.
For better or worse, he’s baseball’s top dog through at least the next collective bargaining agreement and onto the doorstep of another decade. A look at the threats he’s weathered to that grip – and why he’ll maintain it into a third term:
MLB still swims in cash
Through a pandemic, an aging of its core audience and the collapse of traditional distribution models via cable TV and regional sports networks, baseball’s money train remains on time.
Annual revenue in MLB – estimated by Forbes and other sources – has increased approximately 51% percent in Manfred’s time in office, from $7.8 billion in 2014 to nearly $11 billion in 2022. The backbone of this model remains the same – national TV agreements with Fox, Turner and ESPN that provide nearly $2 billion annually, along with local TV deals worth, at best, more than $100 million per team.
Yet threats to the aforementioned economic model add urgency to exploit new revenue streams.
Manfred pushed hard for 14-team playoffs in the last CBA; the players relented at 12, guaranteeing an additional $85 million from ESPN. Shoe-company logos are on every MLB jersey and clubs are empowered to sell their own ads on the sleeves. While Manfred remains cagey about how much revenue MLB earns from gambling partnerships, the once-verboten pastime is now unavoidable in any venue, or on any broadcast.
And lavish ballparks continue to be a cash cow, with relatively modern parks near Atlanta and Dallas getting replaced – largely on the public’s dime – by suburban mixed-use monstrosities. Indeed, real estate – which is not subject to revenue sharing nor counts in the billions generated by the game – is the next frontier, already further enriching owners.
Manfred – by dangling an All-Star Game here, or twisting a political arm there – will, as needed, dust off his skills honed as MLB’s longtime chief labor negotiator to facilitate those ends.
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An owner-first mentality
While commissioners in all sports are vaguely empowered to act “in the best interests of the game,” the new generation of fan has become increasingly aware who actually signs the commissioner’s check.
In MLB, it’s the 30 ownership groups, a cabal of largely multi-billionaire men for which the stakes are only higher as baseball’s franchise values soar.
Manfred does not shy away from protecting them.
When Manfred levied his discipline in the biggest scandal of his tenure – the Houston Astros’ illicit sign-stealing flap – his nine-page report led not with the transgressions of players or failures of front office and dugout personnel, but rather a hosanna to owner Jim Crane, who apparently knew nothing.
“At the outset,” Manfred wrote, “I also can say our investigation revealed absolutely no evidence that Jim Crane, the owner of the Astros, was aware of any of the conduct described in this report. Crane is extraordinarily troubled and upset by the conduct of members of his organization, fully supported my investigation, and provided unfettered access to any and all information requested.”
When Oakland A’s owner John Fisher insisted on Howard Terminal as the only option for a new ballpark – as part of a $12 billion development that would include a massive real estate development – Manfred and MLB played along, calling the present Coliseum site “not a viable option for the future vision of baseball.”
After Fisher and the A’s failed where other sports franchises – the NBA’s Warriors, the NFL’s Rams, MLB’s Giants – succeeded in striking a deal for a new stadium amid California’s more challenging landscape, Manfred was ready with a bailout. He agreed to waive the A’s franchise relocation fee to Las Vegas and shifted blame to the city of Oakland; Mayor Sheng Thao has vigorously disputed that, flying to Seattle to hand deliver Manfred 32 copies of a report detailing negotiations between the city and team, including a timeline.
Perhaps Fisher will eventually prove to be a competent owner, and Las Vegas a success. Perhaps Manfred even believes that. But the A’s flap illustrates Manfred’s willingness to be reviled – in this case, by a region of fans losing their team – in exchange for mollifying the likes of Fisher and his colleagues.
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Move fast and break things
Remember the outrage over the three-batter minimum?
The runner on second to start extra innings, a supposed COVID workaround that quietly became a staple?
A limit on mound visits? That pitch clock? The automatic intentional walk? Invasive checks of pitchers’ hands after selected innings?
Change – innovation, if you prefer – has come rapidly to the game, and even Manfred's most middling suggestions have been met with opposition and derision.
Yet you don’t hear much anymore about so many of them, and perhaps that’s the idea. As a former advisor to a former president once put it, if you flood the zone with, ahem, waste, it makes it much harder to consistently oppose radical change.
It also doesn’t hurt that Manfred has the necessary votes to pass almost anything thanks to the composition of a “joint committee” in which the league outflanks other stakeholders.
While fans, players and the league are united in fear of a crucial late-season or postseason game being decided by a pitch timer violation, the commissioner remains confident umpires will use their discretion to avoid such a scenario. Furor over previous changes has largely died down, thanks in part to few, if any, controversies surrounding them.
And Manfred and the owners have the faster game they desired – checking in at 2 hours, 38 minutes at last glance, a neat little television window or enough time to get the kids home before bedtime.
Getting there was largely the product of pushing through the unthinkable.
Kiss and make up
Manfred’s public approval ratings will never match those in the owners’ room simply because he has a knack for insulting his non-voting constituents – players and fans.
Like calling the World Series trophy a “piece of metal.”
Or snidely responding to a group of A’s fans creatively protesting their deadbeat owner.
Or floating a CBA proposal with a luxury-tax ceiling more appropriate for 2001 economics than 2021, and then locking the players out. Or, barely a year after that lockout he imposed, suggesting that limiting the length of contracts is “an issue that is important for us to stay focused on.”
Yet for all the galling vitriol, Manfred does not hide. He has made a point of meeting with players and entire clubhouses both after the lockout and this season, in the wake of the pitch clock implementation.
On balance, he lands somewhere between the captor who inspires Stockholm Syndrome in his subjects, and the brusque uncle causing a stir at the Thanksgiving dinner table or wedding reception. Ultimately, he manages to foster something resembling a partnership with players, be it forging a domestic-violence policy or hammering out a new CBA (though the latest one came with a work stoppage, albeit with no regular season games missed).
But his strongest partnership is likely with the 30 owners, men whose wealth he’s both maintained and grown. That’s a job he’s pretty good at, and it’s the biggest reason why he’ll be around an additional four years.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred receives four-year extension
