Rob Manfred takes his shot at title of worst commissioner ever

Rob Manfred on June 10: "We're going to play baseball in 2020, 100 percent."

MLB Players Association: "Tell us when and where."

Rob Manfred on June 15: "I'm not confident [there will be a season]. I think there's real risk, and as long as there's no dialogue, that real risk is gonna continue."

You can't help but hate the commissioner of Major League Baseball. After all, he hates baseball, a game many of us love. He's threatening to pull the plug on the 2020 season on the same day he's appearing on an ESPN special called, "The Return of Sports."

Oh, the irony.

Add his gross mismanagement of the restart negotiations to a list of transgressions that includes his push to destroy minor league baseball, his asinine handling of the electronic cheating scandal and his plans to implement a laundry list of ridiculous rule changes, and you have the worst commissioner in the history of baseball.

These talks on the potential restart of the season amid the COVID-19 pandemic have been a farce, with the owners repackaging the same offer over and over again. Every thing they've offered ends in the same place, with the players being offered between 33% and 35% of their prorated pay. They're not going to take that; get a clue, Manfred!

And it's asinine for the owners to say the players are acting in "bad faith." The owners have done nothing but act in bad faith for years, screwing players over with service time manipulation, refusing to sign middle-tier free agents, stocking rosters with Quad-A players to "tank" seasons in the name of better draft positions, and downplaying players' abilities in arbitration hearings.

Granted, none of these things are against the rules. Some say it's "smart business," but one man's "smart business" is another man's bad faith. Over the past few years, we've routinely seen players get outleveraged on the business side of the game, and what's the response? "Welp, the players need to negotiate a better deal."

OK, fine, and now the players are, in fact, taking a hard line to try to get a better deal. Can you blame them? I can't.

I'm left with the conclusion that the owners simply don't want to play this year, because they will lose money, and they are sending Manfred out there to do their bidding.

Newsflash: In the middle of a pandemic, nobody is making money this year. It's about mitigating losses and living to fight another day right now. MLB is going to have even more trouble when another day comes because of all the bad will it is building up with fans and players right now.

I mean, let's be honest about this. If attendance suddenly shot up, would owners tack on some of those extra revenues to player contracts? Of course not. The contracts were signed, and a deal is a deal.

The same is true when the opposite happens. There will be no attendance, so revenues are going down. But you know what? The contracts were signed, and a deal is a deal. Both sides have to abide by the agreed upon terms regardless of what the overall revenues are.

The players are entitled to earn the salaries they negotiated, prorated to the number of games they play -- if any -- this season.

If Manfred was any kind of leader at all, he'd explain this to the owners. The owners are stewards of the game, and they are responsible for its long-term well-being. Right now, they are hurting the game's long-term well-being in the name of trying to avoid losses in 2020.

It's a failing strategy.