The Phillies met with Rob Manfred. Things got heated

The vibe from inside the clubhouse

The Opener

1. Rafael Devers is switching to first base for the Giants. Our long national nightmare is over.

2. The Brewers win streak ended at the hands of the Mariners. Logan Gilbert went far deeper into the game that Jacob Misiorowski, Cal Raleigh homered and that was that.

3. Diamondbacks superstar Ketel Marte’s home was burglarized while he was at the All-Star Game, the latest in a pattern of athlete home break-ins during big events. “Everyone is clear that it’s not a situation that we can feel good about. I’m losing about $400,000, and I think that’s a lot,” Marte told reporters. Very much agreed. That is a lot.

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The Phillies meeting with commissioner Rob Manfred was “passionate”

By Hannah Keyser

Commissioner Rob Manfred has been meeting with each team annually since the last lockout ended with the 2022 collective bargaining agreement. This year, the meeting with the Phillies clubhouse, which took place on Monday, got especially heated. The Bandwagon spoke to Nick Castellanos about the content and the tenor of the conversation, other Phillies declined to comment.

Manfred detailed his outreach strategy at an Atlanta Braves investor event late last month. As relayed in The Athletic, his appeal to the players “this year, it’s really pretty pointed.”

“The strategy is to get directly to the players,” Manfred continued. “I don’t think the leadership of this union is anxious to lead the way to change. So we need to energize the workforce in order to get them familiar with or supportive of the idea that maybe change in the system could be good for everybody.”

In other words, Manfred is endeavoring to drive a wedge between union leadership and the rank-and-file ahead of negotiations. The ominously named Commissioner’s Ambassador Program, or CAP, which consists of high-profile former players on the league’s payroll who often attend these meetings along with Manfred is part of that plan.

The Phillies roster includes a lot of well-paid veteran players who are in a better position to push back than, say, a younger or more transient clubhouse might. Evidently, some of that happened in the hour-long meeting with the commissioner earlier this week.

Castellanos, who said he was among the more vocal players in the meeting, gave The Bandwagon some insight into the vibe of the conversation:

“Passionate,” but not “contentious”

• He resisted a characterization of the meeting as “contentious,” but said “these are passionate conversations” when the implication affects guys’ livelihoods.

• He noted that Trea Turner in particular asked good questions.

• At times, the conversation did get heated enough for players to express some version of “well, in that case, you can leave” to the commissioner.

• But ultimately, Castellanos thought it was a productive dialogue. And “no one was physically assaulted.”

The cap came up, of course

• Asked about whether Manfred explicitly brought up a salary cap, Castellanos said, wryly, that “he was very eloquently speaking around it.”

• Also: Manfred even floated some specific possible counter proposals.

• Castellanos said it’s only natural that players would “speak sternly” when the idea of a salary cap comes up.

Players aren’t labor lawyers

• That eloquence — which, if I may editorialize, could also be considered slippery legalese — was something of a sticking point for Castellanos who expressed concern that the players are “really uninformed” compared to Rob Manfred, a literal labor lawyer.

• “I don’t know whose fault it is,” he said about that information gap.

• To some extent, it’s inherent to their respective job descriptions. This is probably at least part of why Manfred has deployed this approach of addressing players directly, without a union-side labor lawyer present.

My take: I don’t hate the idea of Manfred mixing it up with the players directly, in theory. He’s right to think that in the past, he’s given the impression of being sequestered in an ivory tower. Players should have a forum to air their grievances and try to get answers directly from the source. Manfred isn’t some anonymous boogeyman, he’s (sort of) their boss and his words matter.

Unless they’re completely disingenuous. Ever since we got the report out of that Braves investor event where Manfred laid out his labor strategy of approaching players directly to try to sell them on his plan for “change” that union leadership opposes, I've been thinking: You know they can see this?

Manfred’s role in the labor dynamic is to represent ownership interest. This isn’t a moral failing, it’s his job. When he says explicitly that he has a “strategy” he means a plan designed to optimize the gains on his side. That’s what a strategy is! Anything Manfred says in his meetings with players is part of that strategy. It’s advantageous to make players think his possible proposals are good for them because it makes his job easier, but that job is to benefit the owners. Players are right to have their hackles up in that setting.

Castellanos believes that Manfred really is interested in all 30 teams being competitive. I believe it too! A robust and rivalrous MLB landscape is good for business. An impartial observer could consider whether a cap and floor system might aid that particular goal. But neither Manfred nor the players are impartial observers.

It’s interesting to me that Castellanos’s predominant takeaway from the meeting was that players need to be better educated on the issues in order to navigate Manfred’s approach. This is just my take, but the sense I got was that the Phillies could tell that the commissioner was trying to manipulate them. They were being worked as part of a calculated plan to lay favorable groundwork for a fight that will, eventually at least, become contentious. It is, frankly, a shrewd tactic by the league. Baseball salaries and payrolls are dramatically disparate; the union’s final vote at the end of the last negotiation (in which the executive subcommittee voted against a deal that the majority of team player reps approved) does indicate a divide. Manfred sees an opportunity to sow discord and is trying to seize it. Maybe that works. But maybe instead, it puts the players on high alert and inspires them to be more prepared next time.