Rob Manfred isn’t worried about the MLBPA’s posting system deadline. Not a bit

Shohei Ohtani is transferring to an MLB team soon. Or should be. Probably.

There’s a big hangup with that so far though, namely that there’s no posting system in place right now, which means he can’t be posted, which means he can’t sign to a team in the U.S.!

But Rob Manfred is not too worried about all that. MLB already agreed with Ohtani’s Japanese league Nippon Professional Baseball about a posting system, which seems like the most important piece of this whole puzzle.

Except the MLBPA has instituted a Monday deadline (nobody wants to be distracted from Thanksgiving football after all) for a new posting agreement to be in place, so if they decided that, no, they don’t agree with it and want to push for a more fair system, then that could put a wrench in things.

But again, Rob Manfred is totally not worried about that. No sir.

As ESPN reports, as GM Meetings wrapped up this week, Manfred explained,

“I don’t sense that this is a disconnect with the union. These are relatively small issues. I think it would be a mistake to read any larger significance into the fact that they’re trying to work out a way to get on board with an agreement that we negotiated with the Japanese. It’s a cumbersome process when you have three parties. There are issues, but I don’t think they’re earth-shattering.”

Because whenever one side insists there’s no disconnect with the other side while negotiating on something, that’s always a good sign. Especially when one side doesn’t think the issues are too big or difficult to get through. That always goes well.

So this all seems fine, and I’m sure with one business day left to hash things everyone will end up happy. Totally.