Reds news: Trevor Bauer exposes Rob Manfred’s stall tactics

Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer took Rob Manfred to task over his latest stall tactics.

Love him or hate him, Trevor Bauer is never shy about sharing his thoughts. The Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher’s latest post to Twitter revealed his summation as to why Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said on Monday that he was “not confident” we’ll see baseball in 2020. Bauer’s logic is likely spot-on.

Last week, Commissioner Manfred gave us a 100% guarantee that we’d see baseball in 2020. Just yesterday, Manfred admitted that the optics of the negotiations between the players and owners were a disaster for the game.

Never one to stay silent during the delay to the 2020 season, Trevor Bauer let his voice be heard on social media with a long thread, essentially asking Manfred to lay out why, after the players rejected MLB’s latest proposal, that there might be no baseball this season.

https://twitter.com/BauerOutage/status/1272641345941721088

Bauer went through a week-by-week examination. Knowing that owners want the season to end before October, Bauer surmised that the commissioner would impose a season of approximately 60 games and make the announcement around June 28th. But Bauer then questioned why Manfred has not yet announced a start date.

Well, the Reds hurler went through several examples as to why he assumes things will shake out the way he has predicted, and it basically boils down to the fact that Manfred is stalling in order to give the owners the number of games that they want to see played.

It’s an odd set of circumstances, as both parties have been open to idea of playing as many games as possible. News flash folks; if that were the case, baseball players would already be in spring training. What turned out as regard for player safety and well-being, has turned into a money-grab for both the players and the owners.

The players have held fast to their stance of receiving full pro-rated salaries, while the owners have consistently advocated for less games or reduced salary in order to offset their losses because of the lack of gate revenue.

In the end, while Trevor Bauer is correct, nobody wins. Bauer even says as much near the end of his thread, saying that Manfred is holding a “losing hand”, implying that the Player’s Association called the league’s bluff. The problem is, we’re still no closer to seeing baseball back in 2020.