23 Quotes by Rob Manfred

We've worked very hard on our relationship with the players association. The economics of the sport are strong and the current agreement has worked very well. Those three things are good reason to be optimistic we can get a new agreement without a dispute.

We think you cannot evaluate a program based on the results of a single case, that overall, the rules that we negotiated are designed to be strict but fair with the overall goal being to deter use. To the extent that anyone disagrees with the result in a particular case, it might be the result of our desire to deter use.

The players' association negotiated for a clean slate when a player is promoted from the minor leagues to the major leagues. That clean slate, however, is a two-way street. If minor-league discipline does not count in determining the severity of the penalty to be imposed for a violation of the major-league program, then such discipline cannot immunize the player from discipline under the major-league program.

We are early in the game, ... But, from our prospective, the most important issue in the negotiations was competitive balance. We believe we have seen a significant improvement just this year.

With respect to the appeal process for on-field discipline, that process was negotiated in collective bargaining and has served the industry well for decades, ... Mr. Wells' dissatisfaction with his appeal says more about his poor behavior than it does about the quality of the appeal process.

We like to keep them fairly low-keyed. You're not going to see a lot of publicity.

The tax mechanism in the last basic agreement would not be acceptable to us this time around.

They make these numbers up. We just think it's important that people understand and realize these are not real in any sense of the word.

Forbes has never had access to financial information from major league baseball or the individual clubs.