rob-manfred Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Rob Manfred Phones Marco Rubio, for Reasons No One Understands
Imagine being charged with negotiating the relaunch of a multibillion-dollar industry, which employs thousands of workers, in the middle of a pandemic. Things have been very contentious in recent weeks between you and the union representing your most prominent group of employees. Finally, though, yo...
MLB Owners Test Limits of Believability With Sudden COVID Concerns
The state of negotiations for a 2020 Major League Baseball season is a disaster, with Rob Manfred backtracking on Monday from last week’s assertion of “100 percent” confidence that there will be pro baseball in America this year, and the MLBPA asserting that management is negotiating in bad faith....
MLB Sends Clear Message: Go Ahead, Cheat Your Ass Off
Major League Baseball finally concluded its investigation into the 2018 Boston Red Sox sign-stealing their way to a world championship, and Rob Manfred brought down the hammer on one of baseball’s marquee franchises....
Sports Writers Let George W. Bush Off The Hook And It Looks Like They Are Going To Do The Same With Trump
Among all the wild proposals/blueprints/sketches from various leagues on how to finish their season (NBA and NHL) or just complete it (MLB), there’s a semi-constant thread at the end of all of them. ...
MLB Following South Korea Back to the Diamond Won't Make President Trump Look Like Less of an Ass
There’s going to be professional baseball soon, which is great news for sports fans everywhere....
Braves Give The Lie To Rob Manfred's Insistence That The "Tomahawk Chop" Is Being Discouraged
The Atlanta Braves are supposed to be discouraging the “tomahawk chop” celebration at home games. Or, anyway, that’s what commissioner Rob Manfred told the Washington Post back in February, that the Braves had “taken steps to take out” the chant. But they’re not discouraging it, not really—the Brave...
Does Rob Manfred Even <i>Like</i> Baseball?
Baseball giveth, and baseball taketh away. In these perilous times when every little moment is a referendum on whether the game will survive until Christmas, and every act of untrammeled joy comes with two asterisks that scream, “Yeah, but they’ll screw it up because it’s baseball and only old peopl...
MLB Blaming Its Own Players For Not Being More Popular Is Now An Annual Event
Remember last year, during the All-Star break, when commissioner Rob Manfred responded to questions about MLB’s struggles to promote the historically great Mike Trout by shifting blame onto Trout himself? Remember how Manfred said Trout would have a “very big” brand if he’d work more with MLB, which...
Rob Manfred Says Owners Don't Much Enjoy The Rising Tide Of Dingers
Commissioner Rob Manfred was prompted Tuesday to respond to comments from American League All-Star starting pitcher Justin Verlander, accusing Major League Baseball of deliberately juicing baseballs in order to goose offensive production. To no one’s great surprise, Manfred maintained once again th...
Justin Verlander Says MLB Is Juicing Baseballs To Goose Up Offense
Astros pitcher and American League All-Star Justin Verlander is convinced that baseball’s ongoing surge of home runs is not only the result of a more aerodynamic baseball, but is the result of a baseball that has been intentionally juiced during manufacturing in order to produce more offense. Verlan...
Expanded Protective Netting Is Coming To Major League Baseball, One Stadium At A Time
The Chicago White Sox announced Tuesday that they will extend protective netting at their stadium all the way to the foul poles this summer. They will be the first of 30 MLB teams to make the move all the way to the outfield wall, but certainly not the last....
MLB Advanced Media Made Billions For Baseball, Chewed Up Its Employees, And Spit Them Out
On the second Tuesday of February, at 3:00 in the afternoon, around 40 employees of MLB Advanced Media—one arm of MLB’s media empire, which also includes MLB.com, MLB Network and MLB Productions—nervously filed into a conference room at MLBAM’s office in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market. They had been liv...
How Much Longer Will Baseball Stadiums Be For Baseball Fans?
MLB’s attendance, you might have heard, was down last year, around four percent by season’s end. The league’s front office, represented by anthropomorphized wet blanket Rob Manfred, has operated under the assumption that pace of play is the issue, arguing that “putting the best entertainment product...
MLB Announces Several Rule Tweaks Amid Broader Gathering Sense Of Doom
The best and most important thing about the rule changes announced in Major League Baseball on Thursday is that they were agreed upon by both the league and the MLB Players Association. It is not necessarily encouraging when what should be an obvious tautology is also a highlight, and it is also wor...
Atlanta Braves, Who Are Supposedly Trying To Cut Back On Tomahawk Chop Chants, Opt To Create Instructional Shirt Instead
Here is an ugly shirt from the official team store of the Atlanta Braves, a team that’s been trying to stop fans from doing the racist “tomahawk chop” chant at games....
Oh God, MLB Is Really Going Through With That Stupid Pitch Clock Idea
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s hell-bent charge to turn every professional baseball game into a six-second Vine marches on as the league plans on having a 20-second pitch clock for upcoming spring training games this year, per an MLB press release. As if that weren’t annoying enough, ESPN’s Jeff Pas...
You Don't Have To Believe Any Of This Shit
A non-refundable $45 fee on a bank statement whose existence cannot be explained by anyone; Raytheon’s Twitter account responding to a jape from Lockheed Martin’s Twitter account with a GIF of a grimacing Steve Carell from an episode of The Office; a show on The Learning Channel that is just goatee...
MLB Is Going To New Lengths To Stop Camera-Aided Sign Stealing
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has apparently found another aspect of baseball that needs fixing. According to a report by Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, the league is incorporating a bunch of new bylaws that will snuff out hi-tech sign stealing like the Houston Astros used during last season’s pl...
Rob Manfred Must Think We're Morons
During a press conference with reporters on Sunday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred stood in front of God and everyone and argued that the labor situation in baseball—a sport in which player payroll has declined as league revenues have gone up, more teams than ever are openly tanking, and two 26-year-o...
<i>New York Times</i> Curls Up On Rob Manfred's Lap
This story, co-bylined by current Trump-scandal reporter and former tribune of the MLB commissioner’s office Michael Schmidt for the New York Times, surely isn’t the worst thing you will read this week, but for any baseball fan who lived through MLB’s steroid hysteria, it will be jarring....