Newly elected baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. USA Today Sports

BALTIMORE— Rob Manfred, the right-hand man to outgoing baseball commissioner Bud Selig, has been elected Major League Baseball's next commissioner.

Manfred, MLB's chief operating officer, had long been considered the front-runner to replace Selig, the longtime commissioner who is stepping down in January. Manfred won a vote of the league's owners here on Thursday despite a last-minute challenge.

"I have very big shoes to fill in following Commissioner Selig," Manfred said.

His election came after a full day of politicking by a group of owners led by Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox. Reinsdorf's group was backing Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner for the job.

With Selig and other Manfred backers moving from room to room all morning, Manfred secured the necessary votes from baseball's 30 franchise owners Thursday afternoon, defeating Werner and MLB's vice president of business, Tim Brosnan, and staving off a deadlock scenario that could have pushed the vote to the next meeting in November. Brosnan dropped out in the early afternoon, making it a two-man race, and several rounds of voting were needed before Manfred broke the deadlock and gained the 23 needed votes.

"There were a lot of Tom Werner fans. It was a tough call," Reinsdorf said.

Eventually, several anti-Manfred teams changed their positions, and once that was clear, the owners voted unanimously for Manfred so as to give the appearance of unity. "There were differences of opinion, but in the end we came together," Selig said.

Despite the unanimous vote, it is no secret that Manfred lacks a truly unanimous mandate, and he said he both wants to move past the divided vote and prove to the dissenting owners that he is the right choice.

Manfred said he told the owners following his election that "my commitment to the owners was that I would work extremely hard day in and day out to convince all 30 of them that they had made a great decision today."

The final vote ended a long day. Limousines sat outside the meeting site for hours waiting for the owners to emerge. Finally, at 6 p.m., they exited en masse, and word leaked out that Manfred had been crowned.

Both the Yankees and Mets supported Manfred.

"It was a lot of discussion, a lot of talking, and a lot of voting," said Yankee President Randy Levine. "We supported Rob, and we think he's going to do a great job."

Werner, a former television executive, based his candidacy on modernizing the game and broadening its appeal, focusing on speeding up play, bringing in younger fans, and expanding baseball's international footprint.


Manfred served as baseball's top labor official from 1998 to 2013, successfully negotiating several collective bargaining agreements and keeping the peace with the MLB Players Association following the divisive strike of 1994. Selig promoted him to chief operating officer in 2013, a move that marked Manfred as his eventual successor.

Selig, 80, has led baseball since 1992, when he was named chairman of the executive council following Commissioner Fay Vincent's resignation. Selig was later elected in 1998.

Manfred's ascension will follow a Selig reign marked by enormous revenue growth, lucrative television deals and exploding player salaries, but also marred early by labor strife and later by the revelation of performance-enhancing drug use in the game.

But the election of Manfred, Selig's choice, validates Selig's tenure as a success in the eyes of MLB's owners. "Bud as the ninth commissioner will go down as the greatest commissioner in baseball history, and Rob will fill those shoes," said Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt.

Write to Daniel Barbarisi at