ORLANDO — When are Pedro Martinez and Jesisca Mendoza speaking as baseball team officials, and when are they speaking as members of the media? And how exactly aren’t they speaking on behalf of both employers all of the time?
Rob Manfred, after some initial bobbing and weaving, acknowledged that he’s essentially as confused as the rest of us.
Martinez, a Red Sox special assistant who also works for the MLB Network, and Mendoza, a Mets baseball operations adviser who also works for ESPN, both recently criticized A’s pitcher Mike Fiers for publicly accusing the 2017 Astros, for whom he pitched, of illegally stealing signs from opponents. Fiers’ comments, published by The Athletic, played a vital role in spurring Manfred’s investigation that ultimately convicted the Astros of the crime.
“People are entitled to their own views on topics,” the baseball commissioner said at the conclusion of the Major League Baseball owners’ meetings. “Me personally, I’m a transparency guy. I think that healthy organizations tend to run to the transparent. The idea that someone should be kind of singled out because they saw something that was wrong and decided to talk about it, I don’t agree with that.”
Asked if he reached out to Martinez, Mendoza or the teams for which they work to express his disappointment, Manfred replied, “In what mode they were speaking, whether they were speaking as journalists or club employees, I think we were satisfied that their comments were being made in their role as journalists. And anybody that we have a relationship with, we don’t really try to control what they say in that role as media person. So the short answer is no, we do not reach out.”
Asked whether he was comfortable with such people cherry-picking their “mode,” as opposed to the common sense of always representing everyone who pays them, Manfred said, “Let me give you a short answer on that one: No. I’m not all that comfortable with it. I’m really not. But it’s a topic that remains under discussion internally. As you know, it causes a lot of complications, not just on this particular incident or comments, but in general.”
The Mets also employ MLB Network analyst Al Leiter as a baseball operations adviser.