Rob Manfred is, by trade, a labor lawyer. Harvard-educated. Years of experience.
He isn’t, you could argue at least, a baseball guy, despite the fact he’s worked full time for Major League Baseball since 1998 and been its commissioner since 2015.
Maybe that was the issue. Maybe that was the blind spot.
Faced with a massive cheating scandal that involved the 2017 World Series champion Houston Astros, Manfred thought like a lawyer — reacting cautiously, limiting exposure, setting the terms of the investigation and then finally doling out sanctions that leaned heavily on precedent (both established and future) rather than punishment.