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“I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness”. – Albert Camus, The Stranger
In recent years, the MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred’s intentions have become clear: The MLB must adapt to survive. Sweeping changes to baseball have been made in recent years, with more on the horizon. Manfred and MLB’s vision reflects baseball in the information age, coinciding with seismic shifts reverberating through our national pastime.
The digital revolution has swept through the 2020s, and with it has come a complete reshaping of sports. With AI now domineering how GMs look at player analytics, streaming now taking precedence over cable dominance, and sports betting now legalized throughout most of the country, we have reached a new age of sports. In this ever-changing medium, the MLB has made it its mission not to be left behind. Modern baseball (not the defunct band) is here to stay, and Manfred will ensure so, no matter the costs.
On Sunday, August 17th, during the ESPN Little League Classic broadcast between the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners, Manfred made headlines regarding his comments on divisional alterations, saying, “In my mind, I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign. I think we could see a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel, and I think our postseason format would be more appealing for entities like ESPN because you’d be playing up out of the east, out of the west. And that 10 o’clock time slot where we sometimes get lost in Anaheim, would be two West Coast teams. That 10 o’clock slot that’s a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience…”
The news of floated divisional realignment made waves in the sports news cycle, given how drastic these outlined theoreticals are. With prospective league expansion to markets such as Charlotte, Nashville, Salt Lake City, or Portland, the Commissioner argues that this necessitates more geographically aligned divisions. His proposal, therefore, entails shaking up the National and American Leagues, with ball clubs like the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and Phillies competing in the same division. Or on the West Coast, the Giants and Dodgers splitting into two divisions reflective of North/South-West. The logistical intention of it is to reduce travel costs and put an emphasis on increasing Southern U.S. viewership. With both Nashville and Charlotte being floated as locations for expansion, one of these teams is bound to become a reality. They are both objectively viable markets with the necessary infrastructure for an MLB franchise; the only question is which one appeals more to MLB. That being said, the hypothetical implementation of this vision is substantially flawed. It is an example of Commissioner Manfred putting the bottom-dollar first and neglecting the sanctity of the sport’s traditional aspects. Baseball is a sport that belongs to history, and disregarding this matter is not wise in the grand scheme of things. The commissioner is not a cretin; he is, however, cataclysmically misguided.
Baseball belongs to America, not in a metaphorical way, but in a literal sense of being reflective of our history. Rivalries such as the Giants and Dodgers have spanned over a century. When the Giants left New York for San Francisco in 1957, the action was partially to maintain their regional proximity to the Dodgers, who departed for Los Angeles the same year; Manfred cannot just throw this rivalry in the dust heap and walk away. These ball clubs and their supporters might not care for their rivals in a sporting sense, but are tethered to them regardless. They are bonded through historic competition spanning generations, and for the benefit of baseball as an entity, they should not split up.
Manfred’s wanton disregard of history is perhaps best encapsulated in the Oakland Athletics’ impending relocation to Las Vegas. In 2024, the A’s departed their unwaveringly loyal fans and historic domain at the Coliseum, to leave for a temporary home at a Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento while Vegas’s is being built. The club had dealt with dwindling attendances due to catastrophically haphazard ownership by John Fisher, and supporters had cried out for the league’s intervention. Fisher’s management was an emulation of Seattle SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett’s relocation of his team to Oklahoma City, playing hardball with the local city council and holding no genuine intention of keeping the team in their original city. As Commissioner David Stern did in the NBA’s circumstance, Manfred stood steadfast by the club’s owner and went a step further to blame Athletics fans for their sparse attendance numbers. Despite having A’s fans actually maintaining high attendance numbers even into 2024, it didn’t matter. To Manfred, the victim was at fault, simply because they weren’t lining his pockets.
Through instances such as this, the MLB Commissioner displays his apathy through a clear lack of passion for the game itself. In theory, a sports commissioner should be the governor of the league, not the CEO. Manfred treats his job as though he is competing with the NFL, NBA, and NHL. He sees more value in the fans of other leagues as opposed to the ones he is at risk of alienating. The only engagement that matters to Robert Manfred is the eyes he hasn’t received yet.
When Manfred took over the role from his predecessor, the late Bud Selig, in 2015, it was a transition not only of commissioner, but of baseball eras. From technological advancements like Statcast during Manfred’s tenure to cost-cutting measures resulting in visual changes to the jerseys, everyone who has kept tabs on these changes understood how the traditional style of American baseball was coming to a close. This notion was cemented when, recently, the Commissioner announced an Automatic Ball-Strike system (ABS) would be implemented in MLB games, as of the 2026 season. Given the traditional pride and gamemanship around the sport in a catcher’s framing ability, it begged the question: Does Robert Manfred simply hate baseball? A good catcher can subtly turn a borderline pitch into a strike with nothing more than a steady wrist and convincing presentation. Fans marvel at the best framers because they represent the human element that makes baseball compelling: judgment, deception, and persuasion. It’s not simply about stealing calls, but about a duel of wits between pitcher, catcher, batter, and umpire, each trying to bend the moment to their advantage. To replace that with an algorithm is to strip away a layer of baseball’s craft, a skill that has been honed for over a century. The Automatic Strike Zone might bring technical “fairness,” but fairness is not why people fall in love with the game. They love it because of the imperfections, the arguments, the way a single pitch can be contested in ten different ways. By erasing framing, Manfred erases a part of the game’s soul.
The irony is that baseball does not need to be altered in its fundamentals to survive; it just needs to be marketed effectively. Baseball has always thrived when its stars were mythologized: Babe Ruth in the ‘20s, Jackie Robinson in the ‘40s, Ken Griffey Jr. in the ‘90s. The sport doesn’t lack charisma; it just doesn’t broadcast it. Instead of tinkering with the rulebook, the MLB should focus on creating a brand for its current and upcoming stars. Players like Paul Skenes, Elly de la Cruz, and Pete Crow-Armstrong thrive in their respective markets, but despite their excellence on the field, the league often fails to make them household names. For crying out loud, Skenes is about to hold a sub-2 ERA in only his sophomore season, and you have barely heard a thing about it. Sure, you could make the argument that baseball just isn’t that popular, but if you start putting these players all over social media the way we see Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James, and Connor McDavid and curate them as the face of the MLB, I’m sure you’ll get the response you’re looking for.
To Manfred and other higher-ups in the MLB, baseball’s future revolves around grasping more of the sports market share while trimming any ‘fat’ that stands in the way. This is, of course, to bring about new fans of the game, but do these supposed fans care that suddenly there are AI-umpires or division realignments? These changes seem to merely spit in the face of baseball fans while doing effectively nothing to curate a new conglomerate of Americans to fall in love with the sport. Baseball doesn’t need to be reengineered; it needs to be reimagined in the public eye. The sport’s beauty lies in its history, its pacing, and its mythology, not in mimicking the spectacle of football or the speed of basketball. A strikeout will always be a strikeout, a grand slam a grand slam. But if Manfred continues to seek novelty at the expense of identity, baseball won’t evolve; it will vanish.
