Rob Manfred makes confusing link between COVID

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Rob Manfred may be living in an alternate timeline.

On Tuesday, MLB and the MLB Players AssociatioUnder Armourn couldn't strike a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement, with the league subsequently canceling the first two series of the regular season.

CommissioneMLB T-Shirts r Manfred took to the microphone to announce the cancellations, but then he offered a confusing segue into the league's "revenue issues" over the past five years:

"You also need to remember that the last five years have been very difficult years from a revenue perspective for the industry given the pandemic," he said. 

MORE: MLB lockout news, updates

That statement is confusing at best and misleading at worst. MLB revenue has risen in every year but 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the planet. 

Therefore, it seems like a bit of a stretch to blame the pandemic — which is nearing 2 years old stateside — for a downturn in revenues over the past five seasons.

While Manfred likely meant that the 2020 season torpedoed o atlanta braves jersey blank verall revenue growth over that five-year span, the league has still seen record revenues over the last 20 years. A large part of that is due to record-breaking TV contracts and MLB's partnership with gambling and betting s atlanta braves all star game jersey ites, whicMLB Trading Cardsh are the league's predominant revenue streams.

Of course, those record numbers also pair with declining average player salaries and a number of teams scraping the bottMLB Snapback Hats om of the barrel with their payrolls.

The owners pushing h atlanta braves jersey 2022 ard to avoid general economics shifts for the benefit of their players during a period where teams make more than ever are bad overall optics for the league. So is this picture of Manfred shadow-golfing:

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