Befitting Rob Manfred’s reputation as a shrewd labor negotiator, Major League Baseball devised a new strategy this week to defeat the players association in the entrenched economic fight that has stalled plans to schedule a coronavirus-shortened 2020 season. But it requires articulating the owners’ self-defeating obsession with the bottom line so plainly that perhaps it will finally cost them some ground in the battle over public perception.
On Wednesday, the league rejected the union’s 114-game plan and made it clear that rather than respond with a counterproposal, it will begin pursuing plans to unilaterally impose a season as short as 50 games.