MLB locks doors: Commissioner Rob Manfred calls outages ‘bad for business’

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred spoke to reporters Thursday morning, just hours after team owners voted unanimously to lock players and cause the first outage of the team. tournament since 1994-1995. Although the lockdown coincides with the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it should be noted that negotiations can continue without closing the union.

“It’s not a good thing for sport. It’s not something we take lightly,” Manfred talks about the lock. “We understand it’s bad for our business. We took it out because we want to speed the process towards a deal now.”

Manfred accused the league of failing to observe a sense of urgency from MLB Players Association to make a deal. Manfred thinks locking down players is the owners’ way of putting “pressure” on the federation and making progress in negotiations.

“Sometimes people need pressure to come to an agreement,” He explained. “But to be honest, we didn’t feel that pressure on the other side throughout this week. The only tool available to you in this action is to apply economic leverage.”

Manfred’s blame on the Players Association should come as no surprise to anyone; after all, he works for the owners.

Below, we’ve highlighted four takeaways from Manfred’s first press conference on the lockdown.

1. No new meeting scheduled yet

Although Manfred has stated his desire to speed up the negotiations, the two sides have not scheduled a new meeting since the lockdown began. The supposed last-ditch attempt to avoid the door lock saw the two sides meet for all seven minutes. Both sides are scheduled to depart from Dallas, Texas on Thursday.

2. Fear of the hole before a strike

Manfred’s statement uses the legal term “defensive lockout”, which essentially means the federation fears the players will attack. Manfred confirmed as much during his press conference, noting that competing without a new CBA in place would leave the league vulnerable. In layman’s terms: Manfred and the owner wanted to prevent players from gaining leverage by having that option at their disposal.

3. No proposed rule change

Throughout the negotiations, the two main sticking points appeared to be the anti-competitive behavior of the teams and the now outdated model of player compensation. Manfred, at a minimum, confirmed that neither party proposed to include any actual field rule changes, including, it seems, the commonly specified attacker. It is unclear if any rule changes will be made at a later date.

4. The season of optimism won’t be harmed

Despite all of the above, Manfred claims that he still “optimistic“The season will not be affected and games will not be cancelled. This is the fourth lockout in MLB history; each of the first three has been resolved within 40 days and none of them has been resolved. see MLB cancel or postpone a regular-season competition as a result.