This winter, we learned that Rob Manfred is very bad at handling a cheating scandal.
This spring, we learned that Rob Manfred is very bad at handling the public relations side of a labor dispute.
This summer, we are learning that Rob Manfred (or rather, the MLB as an entity under his leadership) is very bad at conducting adequate coronavirus testing.
Over the weekend, the MLB’s failure to account for the Fourth of July (a holiday that, as its name implies, falls on the same day every year) resulted in delayed testing results, and therefore delayed workouts. This, from a testing regime that had already come under fire for being too light and had, with respect to the Angels, failed to even get the people conducting the tests to show up (to be fair, the whole Los Angeles/Anaheim thing could have caused an issue there). This, on the heels of the mishandling of the Astros scandal, the brutal optics of the negotiations with the MLBPA, and four full seasons of Manfred publicly lambasting pace of play while ignoring arguably larger issues hampering baseball’s marketability (social media copyright policy, suppression of individuality among players, etc.) At this point, it would be generous to Manfred to say that people should be suspicious of his and his administration’s competence.
There appears to be little grasp on what fans want.
There appears to be little care for what players—individuals beloved by the consumer—want.
There appears to be no ability to institute a smooth testing operation in an industry with enough cash flow to routinely generate contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Of course, Manfred works for the owners, and the possibility exists that the public relations issues are coming more from the owners by way of Manfred than from Manfred himself. But the competence? That’s either an institutional problem or a Manfred problem, or—as by now appears to be the case, regardless of where things stood at the end of the Selig administration—a problem with both.
I believe Manfred’s contract runs through 2024. I have no idea what the protocol is for firing a commissioner. Today is not the day to do it. But competence needs to be demanded, because if incompetence persists, baseball will continue to sell itself short.
