One of the things fans and outside observers notice and criticize about MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners is their ability to lie.
Shall we say inability instead?
Everybody usually calls their bluff.
Take, for example, when Manfred stated that the stock market was more profitable than owning an MLB team.
That statement is the reason why people don’t believe anything he says, and why even the outside observers and fans of other sports side with the players in the ongoing labor conflict.
“When Rob Manfred talks about revenues being “difficult” for @MLB the last five years, keep in mind in 2019, the last full season for the sport before the pandemic, it raked in a record $11 billion in revenue. That’s the kind of nonsense people openly laugh at,” MLB analyst and reporter Eric Boland said via Twitter.
When Rob Manfred talks about revenues being "difficult" for @MLB the last five years, keep in mind in 2019, the last full season for the sport before the pandemic, it raked in a record $11 billion in revenue. That's the kind of nonsense people openly laugh at
— Erik Boland (@eboland11) March 1, 2022
Everybody Knows MLB Can And Should Offer A Better Deal To Players
They may say whatever they want, but everybody knows that MLB, as a business, generates incredible revenue.
Owners may have lost money in 2020, the pandemic season, but what about the money players lost by playing just 60 games and missing 102?
Owners enjoyed expanded playoffs that year, too.
Everybody knows that owning an MLB franchise makes owners a lot of money, and that’s exactly why the baseball universe is convinced that owners can easily offer a fair deal to the Players Association.
The union has been making concessions for a long time, slowly achieving some things but far from what they truly deserve.
MLB, when it tries to make people believe they are actually trying, is blatantly lying: they are not trying too hard because they don’t want to surrender a bigger piece of the pie.
NEXT: MLB Insider Shares The Irony Of League's Decision To Cancel Games