Ahead of the All-Star Game in Arlington on Tuesday, Manfred, 65, sat down with The Dallas Morning News for a wide-ranging Q&A on the state of the game and the...
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred speaks to those gathered for the unveiling of the official logo for the 2024 All-Star Game at Globe Life Field in Arlington on Thursday, July 20, 2023.There are signs that changes are drawing fans back to watching the game. Attendance this year has been up slightly, about 2% over 2023, according to MLB, and game times continue to fall. The average game time is down more than a half hour from 2021, to 2:36 this season.
ABS leads into a discussion on umpiring and it seems like umpiring becomes more of a flashpoint each season as technology improves. Beyond TV, the biggest question I hear from fans is about umpiring accountability. Are there more steps that can be taken on umpire accountability for poor performance?“Our contract with the umpires is up at the end of the year. And accountability and performance are always key issues in those negotiations. So, I’m not going into detail on that topic right now.
“I think there is a lot of emphasis on states’ rights right now and the idea the federal government would step in and deprive states of an important source of revenue, I just politically don’t see that happening.“But on the integrity front, we evaluate at the end of each year what programs we had in place and what we can do to make those programs even better. In the era when all sports betting was illegal, it was impossible to monitor.
On that note, offense is down across the league. Does MLB need to do something to promote an increase in offense? Or is it time for deadball conspiracies?“We watch the offense really carefully, just like we do all of the outcomes on the field. We’ve made a lot of changes. I think the changes have been really good for the game. And I think one of the reasons they’ve turned out so well is we were not hasty about them.
“The second one would be youth participation. You start making fans at the bottom. We’ve reestablished baseball as the most participated sport in the under-12 group, a kind of honor that we had lost. Our participation numbers across the board are up. We have made a massive inroads with respect to women and girls in terms of their participation, not only in softball, but baseball as well.
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