Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he is considering major shakeups to the league\u2019s schedule, including the possibility of a split season or an in-season competition similar to the NBA Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve talked about split seasons. We\u2019ve talked about in-season tournaments,\u201d Manfred said Thursday in a radio interview with WFAN\u2019s Craig Carton and Chris McMonigle. \u201cWe do understand that 162 (games) is a long pull. I think the difficulty to accomplish those sort of in-season events, you almost inevitably start talking about fewer regular-season games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a much more complicated thing in our sport than it is in other sports. Because of all of our season-long records, you\u2019re playing around with something that people care a lot about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether players would go for such a format change would also be a key factor. The MLB Players Association declined comment.<\/p>\n
One vision Manfred does not have at the moment: a world where the New York Mets and New York Yankees end up in the same division.<\/p>\n
Manfred has discussed his desire to add two expansion teams for years, bringing the league total to 32 clubs. From there, he has long said he wants to realign the sport geographically into eight divisions of four teams. Manfred said on Thursday that markets that have multiple major-league teams \u2014 Chicago, New York, Los Angeles \u2014 should not have both teams in the same division.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you would try to keep the two-team cities separate,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cThat would be my thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manfred added that much still needs to be done to get to that point. That includes awarding the new franchises, which he has said in the past he hopes to accomplish by the time his contract expires in January 2029.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would realign, you would do it along geographic lines, which would alleviate \u2014 could alleviate \u2014 a ton of the travel burden that\u2019s on players. Remember, we ask our players (to play) 162 times in 186 days. \u2026 You can eliminate a lot of that travel and make it less burdensome, which would be a great thing in terms of player health and safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
The postseason schedule would also benefit, Manfred reiterated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have those four-window days that I love,\u201d Manfred said of the early rounds of MLB\u2019s playoffs. \u201cYou get four baseball games in a day, it\u2019s awesome. But when you think about the fans in the individual markets, you always end up with \u2014\u00a0because of the way we\u2019re set up \u2014\u00a0you get Boston versus Anaheim in one of the early rounds. So you\u2019re either going to be too late (in the day) for the fans in Boston or too early.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you realign geographically, you would look more like other sports, where you play up east into the World Series, and west into the World Series, and that 10 o\u2019clock game on the (East) Coast that sometimes is a problem for us becomes a primetime game on the West Coast for the two teams that are playing. So there\u2019s a lot of advantages to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manfred has previously said he intends to retire in January 2029. Some in the industry have wondered whether he ultimately will want to come back to such a high-paying, high-profile job. He was firm Thursday when asked about his plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m done at the end of this contract,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cI\u2019ve told them (the owners) that, and I\u2019m gonna stick to it. I\u2019ll be 70. It is enough. \u2026 You have a certain period of time when you have things that you want to accomplish, you take your best shot, you try to get as much done as possible. And then it\u2019s sort of time for the next guy with his set of things. And I think that\u2019s healthy and good for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manfred was also asked about his legacy. He took over as commissioner 11 years ago and has overseen the introduction of the pitch clock, which has been almost universally positively received. Revenues are at record highs, eclipsing $12 billion in 2024.<\/p>\n
He has also overseen his share of scandals. The A\u2019s left Oakland and are playing in a minor-league stadium through at least 2027. At his direction, MLB also controversially removed 40 minor-league teams from the league\u2019s affiliated umbrella. Manfred also presided over the electronic sign-stealing era and today has to reckon with gambling issues that threaten baseball\u2019s integrity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that people accept the fact that while there were changes that not everybody loved, that what we did and what we continue to do, is we listen to our fans, and we tried to make the game better for our fans. Every single day, when I go to work, I try to take a minute at the beginning of the day and think: \u2018Remember, it\u2019s about the fans.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can worry about the money and worry about all the issues that you got to deal with. At the end of the day, it\u2019s about the fans. If you get the fans right, you get momentum surrounding the sport, which we are enjoying right now that you can\u2019t buy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A major labor negotiation and possible reinvention of the sport\u2019s media rights system loom before his expected departure.<\/p>\n
\u201cLegacy\u2019s for dead guys,\u201d Manfred joked. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to be dead yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he is considering major shakeups to the league\u2019s schedule, including the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-400901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}