Shortly after penning a letter to baseball fans following the announcement of a lockout, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke with reporters about where the sport goes from here now that the league is in a freeze.
"I don't feel frustrated. I'm disappointed we didn't get to an agreement, that's different than being frustrated," Manfred said Thursday morning, hours after announcing the lockout. "I think we're in a process. I'm prepared to continue that process, and I'm optimistic that we're going to get a deal."
The lockout isn't a requirement following the expiration of the CBA, but Manfred said he believes it is the most efficient step towards ensuring that the 2022 season will start on time.
The two sides met multiple times this week, but all meetings were relatively short, and the majority of those involved assumed a lockout was imminent, given how far apart the two sides were on a number of issues within the game.
Now, Manfred will freeze transactions, indefinitely suspend the Rule 5 Draft, cancel the Winter Meetings and players will not have direct access to their team's training staffs as a result of the lockout, the first stoppage in nearly 25 years.
"It's part of the theory that underlies the National Labor Relations Act," Manfred said. "People need pressures sometimes to get to an agreement. Candidly, we didn't feel that sense of pressure from the other side during the course of this week. The only tool available to you under the act is to apply economic leverage."
Still, plenty of issues need to be resolved between the players and owners before the lockout ends, including free agency and arbitration. Players want free agency to begin earlier than the current six-year model, and want arbitration to begin after two seasons rather than three. That appears to be something Manfred is strongly against.
"We already have teams in smaller markets that struggle to compete," Manfred said. "Shortening the time they control players makes it even harder for them to compete. It's also bad for fans in those markets. The most negative reaction we have is when a player leaves in free agency. We don't see that making that available earlier, we don't see that as a positive."
Manfred's mention of smaller markets struggling to compete is another point of contention from the players, who feel the competitive balance issue in the league is the result of a widespread complacency from organizations to use the luxury tax threshold as a salary cap, and for teams to part with star players just before they reach free agency.
"I've watched this game as an insider for more than three decades," Manfred said. "I think most people who understand the game realize that in our smaller markets, it's a lot harder to win than it is in our bigger markets."
Still, teams like the Rays, A's and Brewers have consistently competed for playoff spots or more in recent years, and teams splurged heavily for big-name free agents before the lockout, with teams like the Rangers, who won 60 games last year, spending over half a billion dollars. That wasn't enough to avoid a lockout, and while the two sides are far apart on a number of issues, Manfred believes the perceived tension between owners and players is overblown.
"The whole relationship issue, I think people put way too much emphasis on that issue," Manfred said. "At the end of the day, it's about the substance. We're here, they're there, and we need to find a way to bridge the gap."
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