SAN DIEGO — Fenway Park hasn’t hosted an All-Star Game since 1999, and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed Tuesday it’s possible Boston could host the game in the next few years. With the 2023 game in Seattle and the 2024 game in Arlington, Texas, 2025 is the next opening.
Although it’s not typical to have a host publicly known so far in advance, the 2026 game is set for Philadelphia, marking 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“The windows for the Red Sox would either be 2025 or after ’26,” Manfred said. “This is in the category of embarrassment of riches: we have a number of really good cities that are very interested in having All-Star games.”
The Cubs appear to be a possibility as well.
“They would be in that category of embarrassment of riches that I referred to when I got asked about the Red Sox,” Manfred said. “The Red Sox and the Cubs have both expressed an interest.”
Here’s more from commissioner Rob Manfred’s press conference at the Winter Meetings:
Angels want to be sold by Opening Day
The Angels and Nationals both have people “in the data room,” as Manfred put it — prospective owners who are reviewing club financial information.
On the Angels, Manfred said: “The point at which people actually see financial information is an important step forward in the process. My understanding is that the club would like to have the sale resolved before Opening Day. Whether that happens I think depends in part on the bidding process and how quickly you can get documents done.”
Manfred didn’t put any timetable on the Nationals sale, however.
Manfred not worried about Orioles litigation
Manfred indicated he’s not too worried about the lawsuit Orioles control person John Angelos and his mother, Georgia, are facing from his brother Louis.
“As long as I have this job, I think you can count on the fact that the Orioles are going to be in Baltimore,” Manfred said. “I have talked to both John and Mrs. Angelos at length, in person about this topic. I’m comfortable with the positions that they’ve taken. It’s absolutely clear that under baseball’s rules, John Angelos is the controlling person and he has the vote for the club.
“I’m sorry that there’s litigation involved. It attracts a kind of negative attention to the game. Having said that, I’m really comfortable about the way the club’s being run and our relationship, meaning Major League Baseball’s relationship, with the club.”
No confirmation on automated strike zone
Manfred doesn’t sound sold on the automated strike zone and its implementation for 2024 just yet.
“That’s an interesting question,” Manfred said, before explaining that he doesn’t want to get ahead of the competition committee, which features MLB and union representatives and discusses potential rule changes. (Ultimately, though, MLB, and therefore Manfred, control the committee because they have more seats.)
“The one thing I will say from a technology perspective, or from a developmental perspective, we learned a lot about ABS in 2022, suggesting to me that we’re probably not done learning about ABS,” Manfred said.
What BAMTech sale means for teams
Manfred didn’t offer too much publicly on the spending his teams are doing this offseason.
“I have this thing about the free agent market: the free agent market is going to be what it is,” Manfred said. “It’s the product of a whole bunch of economic forces and individual decisions by clubs as to what they want to do. On the positive side, I think a week in December where there’s a ton of focus on players and where they’re going to be for baseball is a good thing in terms of marketing the game.
“And on the downside I think everyone in this room understands that we have a level of revenue disparity in this sport that makes it impossible for some of our markets to compete at some of the numbers we’ve seen. And, you know, that’s not a positive. It’s like everything else in life, there’s good and bad in it.”
Whether such big spending is actually “impossible” is difficult to assess without financial information MLB teams do not disclose publicly. Ultimately, though, all owners have a level of freedom to invest or not invest in their payroll.
MLB just sold another stake in BAMTech to Disney for $900 million, which averages out to $30 million per club, and Manfred was asked whether that money would be used in free agency.
“We actually closed the transaction, so central baseball’s received the money,” Manfred said. “The money will go out to the clubs before year end, they know exactly what they’re getting and when they’re gonna get it. Like every other decision, it’s an individual club decision as to whether they want to take that money and put it into player payroll or they want to reduce that — and what we saw with the other or two … BAMTech payments, clubs, it was a mixed bag. Clubs did different things with it. And I expect that will sort of be the same this time around.”
Meanwhile, agent Scott Boras wants to see more evidence before evaluating the collective bargaining agreement that was agreed to earlier this year.
“I don’t know how it’s worked out yet, only in the sense of watching this AAV (average annual value) modality ongoing,” said Boras. “Lower AAV, more years. Keeps them under the luxury tax when their AAVs are smaller. They’re going extra years to get the volume of the money in more years.”
Latest on Oakland, Tampa Bay stadium situations
As is the case virtually any time Manfred holds a press conference, he was asked about the stadium situations in Oakland and Tampa Bay.
“We’re past any reasonable timeline for the situation in Oakland to be resolved,” Manfred said. “If you read the collective bargaining agreement, you know there’s kind of a natural trigger in there, I think it’s the 15th of January, 2024. They need to have a deal by then so this is a very, very important year. If Oakland wants to keep the A’s, they need to figure out a way to get a deal in front of the A’s that’s acceptable to John Fisher.”
Manfred noted that Fisher is willing to make a $1 billion contribution to a new stadium. Manfred did not note how much money taxpayers would have to foot.
The Rays are still looking for a stadium in the Tampa Bay area.
“(Rays owner Stu Sternberg) is trying to explore all of the available options in the Tampa Bay region to get a facility that is a first class Major League facility and improves the economic situation of the Rays,” Manfred said.
Manfred calls RSN model ‘probably not sustainable’ long term
Manfred appeared to be a tiny bit more pointed about the future of regional sports networks than he had been before, although he’s been talking about creating greater access for fans for at least the last three years. One of the difficulties MLB faces is that there are existing contracts that limit where and how games can be shown, both between the teams and their RSN, and between the RSNs and distributors (like a cable or satellite company).
“The RSN model as it exists today is probably not sustainable over the long haul as a result of the number of people that are opting out of the cable bundle,” Manfred said.
“When you accept that as a reality, it creates an opportunity for conversations between clubs, content owners, broadcast entities — RSNs and otherwise — and distributors as to how that deck is going to be reshuffled. A major player in that is distributors that hold the exclusivity right now. There is an ongoing process, conversations among the major players, directed at trying to come up with a new model that’s more sustainable, and most important from our perspective, gives us better reach in terms of fans being able to get games whether they’re in the bundle or out of the bundle.”
(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
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