Rob Manfred Was Reportedly Ready To Step In if Chris Sale Was Chosen To Start the All-Star Game Instead of Paul Skenes

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but Meddlin' Manfred was reportedly ready to put his thumb on the scale of baseball again and disrupt the natural order of the game.

Chris Sale's final start before the All-Star break ended up being on Sunday, making him ineligible to pitch in Tuesday's All-Star Game. But if the schedules had lined up and he was available, National League manager Torey Lovullo may not have even had the option for Sale to start anyway because MLB wanted Paul Skenes on the bump.

And look, I get it. Skenes is electric and having him on the mound to face Gunnar Henderson, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge in the first inning is going to be awesome. But if you're a real baseball fan, is it really that much better than Chris Sale having maybe the best season of his career at 35 years old? The two pitchers' numbers are pretty much neck and neck: they both have 3.2 WAR at the break, both are around 12 strikeouts per nine innings and both have outstanding ERAs — Sale is currently second in the NL among qualified pitchers with a 2.70 while Skenes has a 1.90 but doesn't yet have enough innings to qualify. However you want to look at the numbers, they're obviously both incredible pitchers.

And I wouldn't even have a problem with Skenes starting the game if both were available, assuming that's who Lovullo picked. But if Manfred was really going to step in and demand Skenes be on the mound in the first inning to maybe get a few more people who don't really care about baseball to watch, that's a different story.

I hope Skenes goes out there and has three strikeouts on 100 MPH fastballs. I absolutely love watching him pitch and I'm glad it didn't have to come at the expense of another deserving guy — even though I'm theoretically mad at the hypothetical possibility that it was going to.