MLB given ultimatum to start season after weeks of negotiations between players and owners
Sports reporter and analyst Jason Page weighs in.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred admitted on Wednesday that the league never intended to play more than 60 games in the 2020 season amid the coronavirus pandemic.
During an appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show”, Manfred was asked to rate how he did during the negotiating process, and he responded by saying in truth that more than 60 games wasn’t going to happen.
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“The reality is we weren’t going to play more than 60 games no matter how the negotiations with the players went, or any other factor,” Manfred said during the radio show. “I think this is the one thing we come back to every single day. We’re trying to manage something that has proven to be unpredictable and unmanageable. I know it hasn’t looked particularly pretty in spots, but having said that, if we can pull off this 60-game season, I think it was the best we were going to do for our fans given the course of the virus.
“It’s the calendar. We’re playing 60 games in 63 days right now,” Manfred added. “I don’t see, given the reality of the health situation over the past few weeks, how we were going to get going any faster than the calendar we’re on right now. No matter what the state of those negotiations were.”
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Patrick also asked Manfred if there were any owners who didn’t want to resume the season.
"There were one or two that were opposed to the idea of playing for health reasons,” Manfred said. “The vast majority of our owners wanted to play. From the perspective of our owners, they're making an investment in terms of additional losses in order to get the game back on the field. We owe it to our fans."
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