Rob Manfred knows what labor strife looks like. As an outside counsel to Major League Baseball during the 1994-95 players’ strike, he saw baseball at its self-destructive worst. As MLB’s full-time executive vice president, he negotiated the league’s first drug-testing policy and the collective bargaining agreements of 2002, 2006 and 2011.
If baseball’s labor relations are truly at a 25-year nadir, as some have claimed this offseason, perhaps no one is more qualified to address that assertion than Manfred, who, at age 60, is entering his fifth year as commissioner.
He has seen the predictions of doom, read the reports of union members voting already to hold back licensing payments as a potential strike fund and noted the words of one agent who told The Athletic recently that the sides may be “locking arms and walking off the cliff together” — and cautions everyone to calm down.