Former Dodger Ross Stripling reveals how owners tried to mislead players in CBA talks

Ross Stripling, during his tenure with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was known for his “no-hitter that never was” in his 2016 major league debut when he was removed in the eighth inning against the San Francisco Giants due to an elevated pitch count. He had allowed four walks and zero hits but was already at 100 pitches in his first MLB start.

Since then? He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays, with his last highlight (or lowlight) being yelling at teammate Joe Panik for making an error during one of his outings. It was a really, really bad look.

The silver lining, though? Stripling can channel than anger and frustration in a productive way: putting the MLB owners and commissioner Rob Manfred on blast by revealing their bad faith negotiations.

After Tuesday’s talks went south and Manfred canceled the first two series of the regular season, Stripling spoke to the media and absolutely laid into the owners, peeling back the curtain on the bad faith negotiations fans have heard about via speculation.

Former Dodgers RHP Ross Stripling put the MLB owners on blast for the lockout

You mean to tell us that the owners used Bob Nightengale as a mouthpiece to make it seem like a deal was progressing much quicker than it actually was and then placed the blame on the players when an agreement was indeed never close in order to mislead fans? You don’t say!

According to Stripling, when the negotiations crept past midnight on Monday, the owners tried to sneak some provisions by the players with fine print in the back-and-forth proposals. The big baby billionaires didn’t get their way on every single talking point, so they allegedly resorted to cheap tactics in an effort to prove they were even more disingenuous than we thought they were.

Is it surprising, though? Manfred has largely done nothing good for the sport since taking over eight years ago. There’s no need to list everything, but this gives you a pretty good idea of who he is and what his initiatives are:

Wait a second … this can’t be the same owner that locked out the players the moment he had the opportunity to do so and then failed to offer a proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement for 43 days after that? And then had no answer as to why that was the owners’ way of doing things when the sport was already in a perilous state?

Rob Manfred and the owners, ladies and gentlemen. It’ll be fun reading about this in 20 years, won’t it?

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