San Francisco Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow, a long-time MLB player in the 1970s and ’80s, has made his opinion about the lockout, the CBA negotiations, and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred known.

During a Thursday interview on KNBR’s Murph & Mac show, Krukow said that Manfred should be replaced and that “he will be the next villain in the Batman movie.”

“I say replace him,” Krukow said. “He’s got to go. Like (Marcus) Stroman said, ‘Manfred gotta go.’ I’m on board with that. If that happens, he’s going to fall out of this job and land on his feet. He will be the next villain in the Batman movie. And he’d be a good one.”

Krukow also said that MLB’s negotiations were misleading, with the league attempting to interject rule changes into the CBA negotiations just before MLB’s self-imposed deadline to avoid the cancellation of Opening Day.

“I just felt so misled when this whole thing went down, especially when in the 11th hour, they come up with, ‘Oh, by the way, we want a (pitch) clock and it’s going to be 2023, and we’re going to use bigger bags.’ What? You’re talking about this now? Ninety-two days ago when this lockout began, you didn’t start talking about that stuff then? It’s the same stuff that Manfred did in 2016. He bull-rushed the issues in the last minute and things got pushed through.”

Back in December, prior to the lockout was implemented by the owners, Manfred himself said rule changes were not on the table during these CBA negotiations.

On Thursday morning, the commissioner, Rob Manfred, revealed that himself. He sat at a podium in Texas and acknowledged that despite months of bargaining, Major League Baseball still has not made “any specific rule-change proposals” to the players.

In fact, he intimated at his first post-lockout press conference, MLB doesn’t intend to get around to that part of the discussion at all during these negotiations.

Wait. What?

“Frankly,” the commissioner said, “based on the discussions at the table, we saw it as another contentious issue and tried to put it to one side in an effort to get to an agreement – on the theory that we could deal with it mid-term of the next agreement.”

Back in 2018, Krukow revealed he was in favor of cutting down the length of commercial breaks and adding advertising to uniforms.

You can check out the full, nearly 20 minute interview with Krukow below.

[KNBR]

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.