All-Star Game: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on seven-inning doubleheaders

On Tuesday, before the 2021 MLB All-Star Game at Coors Field (the home of the Colorado Rockies), Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke with members of the BBWAA, including Rox Pile’s Kevin Henry.

In the nearly 40 minutes that Manfred fielded questions, there were a lot of things that we learned from Manfred about what he sees in the near future for Major League Baseball.

One of those things was about seven-inning doubleheaders.

Before the All-Star Game, Rob Manfred doesn’t think the seven-inning doubleheaders will be around much longer

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The Colorado Rockies haven’t had to deal with this as much as some other teams but all teams have had to deal with it in 2020 or 2021: seven-inning doubleheaders.

It was implemented because of COVID-19 for a number of reasons, including four fewer innings that have to be pitched, less strain on other players, shortened time of games, and more time for teams to travel to their next destination (if it was a getaway day).

However, Commissioner Rob Manfred said before the All-Star Game on Tuesday that he doesn’t think that they will stick around after 2021. He even admitted that, in hindsight, he might have made doubleheaders nine innings in 2021 if he thought things would be doing so well in the United States after the pandemic.

"“There’s a lot of things that we’ve talked about in terms of changes in the game that we experiment with that we think are sort of long-term objectives,” Manfred said. “Seven-inning doubleheaders are in a different category. It was a COVID-related change. I think that I don’t think that seven-inning doubleheaders are going to be a part of our future going forward, number one.“Number two, you know, at the point in time, we adopted seven-inning doubleheaders for this year, we didn’t know we were going to that the country was going to look like it looks right now. As a matter of fact, we were really scared that it was going to look very, very differently. If I knew it was going to be like this, might have we done different rules (and kept nine-inning doubleheaders)? Maybe.”"

One thing that is different for the seven-inning doubleheaders this year is that fans are at the games. All 30 teams are at 100 percent capacity now but for the doubleheaders that have dual admission and not single admission, the ticket prices are the same as they would be for a nine-inning game.

Manfred admitted that seven-inning doubleheaders are “not perfect from the fan’s perspective and we are worried about that” but he will not change it for the remainder of the season because “it’s hard to change it midstream because we’re competitive impacts.”

Manfred and MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark had plenty of other things to say about the state of the game and the future of the game and we will have their thoughts, as well as the thoughts of many other people involved in the All-Star Game festivities in the coming days here on the site.