Jeff Frye wasn’t looking back at the Red Sox’s 4-2 win over the Marlins. He was looking at what baseball has become, taking aim at Rob Manfred’s influence on the game.

Frye pointed to how dramatically certain aspects of baseball have changed since his playing days. He wasn’t impressed with those changes and directly criticized Rob Manfred Jr., MLB’s 10th commissioner, for what he believes has happened to the sport.

To make his point, the former Red Sox star responded to a clip on X shared by sports analyst Dan Clark.

The video that he responded to was a compilation of several MLB moments from the 2026 season. Each frame showed the same familiar graphic: a rectangular box outlining the strike zone at different ballparks, including Rogers Centre, Dodger Stadium, and Fenway Park. It’s the graphic used during broadcasts when MLB’s automated ball-strike system, or ABS challenge system, is involved.

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The numbers next to the strike-zone box showed the pitch-speed reading. In some of the clips, the readings were around 35-37 mph, which is obviously nowhere near the speed of a typical MLB pitch. That’s because the pitcher in the footage wasn’t a traditional pitcher at all.

One of the clips showed Miguel Rojas, a position player, tossing extremely slow pitches in what was clearly a lopsided game. Teams typically turn to position players on the mound when a game is already out of reach and they want to preserve their bullpen arms.

“Rob Manfred ruined baseball,” Clark captioned the clip, and Frye reposted it with his reply. “Yes he did!”

For Frye, it was more than a reply. It was a direct dig at the commissioner and the direction MLB has taken.

That brings us to the larger issue: position players throwing slow eephus pitches and potentially taking away from the competitiveness of games. Once a rare sight, position-player pitching has become much more common since 2021.

These appearances often lead to ERAs above 6.50, while roughly two-thirds of position-player outings allow at least one run because hitters can sit back and attack the slow, predictable pitches.

One example came from Diamondbacks catcher James McCann, who threw a series of eephus pitches ranging from 31.3 to 49.6 mph during a blowout against the Milwaukee Brewers. Only 11 of his 24 pitches were strikes.

But why is Manfred being blamed for this? In 2023, MLB restricted position-player pitching to blowout and extra-inning situations in an effort to reduce how frequently it occurred. So why does Manfred’s name keep coming up in the discussion?

The answer takes us beyond position players pitching and into MLB’s larger collective bargaining debate.

Rob Manfred’s role in MLB’s competitive balance debate

Rob Manfred’s role in Major League Baseball’s competitive balance debate is shaped by his position as the representative of the league’s 30 team owners. He has to balance MLB’s overall financial health with the growing gap between high- and low-spending franchises. Manfred has consistently described competitive balance as a key priority for keeping fans engaged.

However, critics argue that some of the mechanisms introduced under his leadership, such as the Competitive Balance Tax, function more as a soft financial penalty for big-market teams than as a true spending limit. His administration has also faced scrutiny over revenue sharing, with some small-market owners accused of pocketing league payouts instead of reinvesting that money into player payroll.

As MLB heads toward its next collective bargaining negotiations, Manfred has pushed for a major structural change that would include a hard salary cap and a salary floor.

The players’ union strongly opposes that model, arguing that genuine competitive balance should come from enforcing minimum team spending rather than putting a ceiling on player salaries.

And Jeff Frye isn’t alone in criticizing Manfred’s approach. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tarik Skubal has also spoken out against the commissioner’s push for a salary cap.

“It’s [salary cap] not good for players. If you ask any other player in any other union, in the other major sports, they would agree, and they would want our CBA structure,” Skubal told Jesse Rogers of ESPN.

With more players now speaking up, the debate is only getting louder. The focus will now shift to the coming days as MLB and the players’ union work toward what could become one of the most important labor battles in recent baseball history.