Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred appeared on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” during Monday’s All-Star Game festivities and spoke about the non-competitive baseball system that teams, like McAfee’s hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, use.
Manfred responded to McAfee’s comments with: “We need to fix this.”
McAfee said that growing up, he wasn’t the biggest baseball fan because going to Pirates games was more of an experience than watching baseball win. Manfred said he wants the league to be competitive at all levels and is working on it. With the comments he made, this could mean something is in the works for the new collective agreement.
The current collective agreement expires after next season and with questions about a potential lockdown happening, this could be a turning point for the league and the owners.
There are many ways to incentivize teams to produce competitive baseball teams every year, and could also be punished for being uncompetitive by design rather than for purely baseball reasons.
Manfred is aware of the problem corrupting the league’s teams and wants to tackle the problem head-on before it gets even worse and the league starts losing fans in those markets.
Forcing teams to spend and instituting a salary cap has been a topic of discussion at every CBA expiration recently, and while there has been no progress on adding a cap, Manfred is committed to growing baseball.
Restrictions on non-competitive teams could be one of the biggest issues to be addressed at next year’s CBA meetings.
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