While the world is dealing with COVID19, and trying to figure out how to get back to our lives as usual, Rob Manfred is taking advantage of the pandemic to push his agenda. A few weeks ago, that mean shortening the draft, which, when you break it down, really only served the purpose of having fewer players. With fewer players, it is easier to push forward with the plan of contracting 42 minor league teams.

Now, Manfred is doing this again to try to implement the universal DH.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported MLB is considering utilizing Spring Training facilities to allow MLB to play the 2020 season. With the Grapefruit League and Cactus League being split up by an East/West designation rather than an AL/NL designation, in order to effectuate this plan, there will need to be radical realignment for one year.

With that radical realignment would come a universal DH.

Now, if a radical one-year re-alignment is necessary to pull off baseball in 2020, no one is going to complain. With AL teams being built for the DH, you can understand implementing a universal DH under this plan. After all, it is difficult to ask teams like the White Sox with Edwin Encarnacion to find a place to put him in the field for a full season.

If you look to the Mets, you could make the argument this benefits them. This would allow the team to DH Yoenis Cespedes in the last year of his contract. Digging deeper, J.D. Davis really belongs in a DH role. You could also look to DH Pete Alonso to permit the superior defensive first baseman in Dominic Smith to play first.

However, this isn’t an argument for what is best for the Mets. Rather, this is an analysis about what is best for baseball. Maybe, a truncated season split up like this for one year is what is best for everyone. Maybe, you do need the universal DH to make this work.

On a one year basis, we should be willing to do whatever is necessary to have baseball in a safe fashion. Safety is the first priority.And yet, this once again appears like Manfred is really taking advantage of the situation.This time, instead of reducing the amount of minor leaguers with no specific purpose, he is now pushing for a universal DH for these games.

It is difficult to come to a different conclusion when the original proposed plan was to have all 30 teams in Arizona and effectively quarantining them as a league there. Now, the plan is to have half the teams in Arizona and the other half spread across the State of Florida. The very minute this shifted from lockdown to travel is where suspicions should arise.

Maybe, this is all bluster, and nothing will come of this. It is possible this is just the brainstorming which needs to and should occur. You can argue all that you want, but after we get through every plausible explanation, there is still the air of suspicion which should surround the commissioner moving on from limiting the draft to finding a way to implement a universal DH.

In the end, it just appears like Manfred is using this situation to push through his agenda knowing there won’t be much opposition due to people’s safety concerns. There is a phrase for this – it’s called taking advantage.