“Player marketing requires one thing for sure: the player,” Manfred said. “You cannot market a player passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing.
“Mike is a great, great player and a really nice person, but he has made certain decisions about what he wants to do, and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time, and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time. That’s up to him.
Bill Shaikin is the national baseball reporter for the Los Angeles Times.