Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred made a nearly $1 billion mistake.

Manfred and top MLB executives were the ones who insisted on placing an opt-out in the final three years of its seven-year, near-$4 billion contract with ESPN. ESPN’s chairman Jimmy Pitaro and his team agreed to the opt-out clause but asked for their own. Manfred and MLB acquiesced.

Then ESPN used it this February.

ESPN planned to pay around $1.65 billion over the next three seasons for “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby and first-round playoff games. Now, NBC/Peacock has picked up “Sunday Night Baseball” and the first-round playoff games for nearly $200M a year, while Netflix took on the Home Run Derby, Opening Day and the “Field of Dreams” game for $50 million per season.

Those two deals add up to nearly $750 million in total over the next three years, which is $900 million less than what ESPN owed before the opt-out. Manfred’s move in the original negotiations is akin to reaching for a 3-0 pitch and fouling out instead of just taking first base and collecting $1.65B. And then, there was a little more.

When ESPN announced its opt-out in February, Manfred said MLB was opting out, too. It was kind of like some teenage-angst approach, “You are breaking up with me! Well, I’m breaking up with you!” Next, like a scorned lover scribbling a mean message in a yearbook, Manfred sent a memo to the league’s owners calling ESPN a “shrinking” platform.

While Manfred sounded as if he wanted to make the break-up permanent and gave ESPN the silent treatment for a few months, the whole industry felt MLB was destined to get back together with ESPN.

In June, Manfred acknowledged he wished MLB didn’t have the opt-out clauses put in, saying they were a part of the compromises.

“We liked the deal we had,” Manfred said. “You know, looking backwards, I do wish I wasn’t in position to sell three years, so we can line our rights up up to 2028? The answer is yes.”

By July, Manfred and Pitaro made up at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley conference in Idaho — as executives are wont to do — and eventually MLB ended up selling one of the league’s crown jewels, MLB.TV, to ESPN, its out-of-market streaming distribution platform; the rights to six teams’ local, in-market games; and 30 exclusive weekday regular season games.

MLB recouped the $1.65 billion deal from ESPN, which will pay $550 million per year for three years for these rights. To twist a phrase, money heals all wounds.

MLB’s spin is that it is now making similar money, seemingly overlooking that this is the case by auctioning off perhaps its most premier rights of games outside of the playoffs. If it hadn’t done the extra ESPN deal, the differences would be unspinnable. And if MLB had kept the pre-opt-out ESPN $1.65 number and then done a new MLB.TV deal, it would, in theory, have twice the money in its pocket now. In MLB’s view, if not for the opt-out, it would not have added 30 national games and would not have been in the market to create more value from MLB.TV.

“We are thrilled with these agreements, which allow us to add two great new partners while continuing with ESPN,” an MLB spokesperson said. “These deals expand our reach with more broadcast windows on NBC, the global distribution of Netflix, and a strong presence on ESPN’s new app. We are set up extremely well for our next round of long-term media rights agreements when they all expire following the 2028 season.”

MLB was believed to be gaining hundreds of millions from its MLB.TV platform, though exact figures aren’t known. They have done a wonderful job building it up and had previously been reluctant to sell the rights to it. It’s very popular among the most ardent MLB fans. Now, ESPN gets control over one of the most valuable day-to-day properties in streaming sports TV.

The network is expected to keep the service at the same $150 per season cost, but hasn’t fully concluded how it will deliver. One possibility is that it will give MLB.TV subscribers a free month of ESPN Unlimited, its direct-to-consumer service.

The new media era has been tough on MLB. With the disintegration of regional sports networks, partnerships with too many platforms and the not-entirely-their-fault plague of arcane local blackout rules, MLB has fallen behind the NFL and NBA in the media rights game.

However, there may be some good news for MLB and its media future in the on-deck circle. The game is very popular, as evidenced by the attendance records this year on a local level and Fox’s tremendous World Series ratings for the Los Angeles Dodgers-Toronto Blue Jays seven-game classic on the national stage.

With these deals, Manfred and company may have produced a two-out rally, putting some ducks on the pond for its more important media negotiations when all of its TV rights from Fox with the World Series, TNT Sports (which distributes a good portion of the playoffs) and these new deals all expire after the 2028 season.

While there is a threat of MLB labor strife after next year and the NFL opt-out at the end of the decade looming to gobble up all the money in the sports media ecosystem, MLB should be in a good position to reconfigure how it presents its games.

MLB now has national deals with Fox, TNT Sports, ESPN, NBC, Apple and Netflix. It’s too many, but they are the right types of places. This is a step forward, considering Manfred and MLB did an exclusive Sunday morning deal with Roku for $10 million a year for some reason. It is now headed back to its original home of Peacock.

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and maybe Paramount-powered CBS Sports could have interest in the Fall Classic when those rights come up for negotiation. There could be a lot of players next time around.

That was the problem when Manfred wanted an opt-out from Pitaro. He had no other bidders and didn’t realize that three-year deals are hard to sell. MLB needs better advance scouts.

Manfred has a chance to reset in 2029. He wants to solve the local problem. The ESPN agreement will give the league a glance at what its dream of an all-30-team approach to local rights might look like.

Going on the assumption Manfred eventually figures out the labor issue, he will go into the 2029 negotiations with a 2-0 or 3-1 count, and maybe he has a couple of runners on, with the additions of NBC and Netflix in this round.

On the next deal — which is far bigger and more important — Manfred needs the right platforms, and he’d better nail the money too. No more fouling out on ball fours.