MLB’s Olympic interest disrupts Blue Jays’ spot in All-Star Game queue

PHILADELPHIA — Major League Baseball’s interest in sending players to the 2028 Olympics is disrupting the queue for future All-Star Games, commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday, pushing back the Toronto Blue Jays’ efforts to host the event for a second time.

Speaking at his annual session with members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, he described participating in the Los Angeles Games as “as a unique opportunity to market the sport with our very, very best players,” but also “a disruptive undertaking.”

If baseball does get there, and it’s part of the current collective-bargaining-agreement discussions between the league and the union, the All-Star Game would need to be on the West Coast for logistical reasons, with Players Association head Bruce Meyer saying as far as he knew, San Francisco would be the site.

After the Chicago Cubs were awarded the 2027 game, the Blue Jays were believed to be next in line, but club president and CEO Mark Shapiro suggested back in April that the Olympics were complicating things.

The Cubs last hosted in 1990, the Blue Jays in 1991, the Baltimore Orioles in 1993 and “I think I have been more chronologically disciplined than my predecessor was in terms of awarding games and I was on a pretty good track until LA28 popped up,” said Manfred. “We’ve got a lot of uncertainty as to what we’re going to do with ‘28 and it does affect (the next All-Star Games).”

Last year, Manfred said the Blue Jays were “perking up to the top of the list,” seemingly positioning them next in line. The commissioner is planning to retire in January 2029, so if they don’t get the contest that summer, it will be up to his successor to bring the event back to Canada.

Participation in the Olympics is no sure thing, with Meyer stressing that talks between the sides were in “very early stages” and that “there are a lot of issues.”

“The sides have made maybe one proposal each on the subject,” he said. “One of the issues the league has raised is they want to make it mandatory for players who are selected to appear at the All-Star Game and Olympics. The proposals they made in terms of what the discipline would be, the ramifications of a player who doesn’t want to do that, in our view, were extreme. That’s currently being discussed. We’re at an early stage. All that remains to be determined.”

Manfred said MLB is seeking mandatory participation for selected players because “if we’re going to undertake that effort, we want our very best out there so that people see how great our game really is.”