Rob Manfred has just been given a five year extension through January 2029 as commissioner of Major League Baseball.

His main job is to make baseball owners richer. By that yardstick Manfred, who took over from Bud Selig in January 2015, deserves to stay on the job.

Since Manfred became commissioner the average MLB team value has increased from $1.2 billion to $2.32 billion. That works out to an average annual gain of 8.6%, or 5.3% per year after inflation.

The appeciation in values has been underpinned by actual transactions of control stakes. Under Manfred’s watch there have been four control stake team sales. New York Mets were sold for an MLB record price of $2.42 billion in 2020. In 2019 the Kansas City Royals changed hands for $1 billion, in 2017 the Miami Marlins went for $1.2 billion, and in 2016 the Seattle Mariners were bought for $1.4 billion.

And the Los Angeles Angels could have been sold for a price nearing $3 billion earlier this year had Arte Moreno not changed his mind about selling the team. The Angels sale price wasn’t a pipe dream when you consider that a minority stake in the Philadelphia Phillies recently went for $2.7 billion valuation.

True, under Manfred’s helm MLB values have not quite kept pace with the overall stock market, which is up 8.8%. Nor has Manfred done as well has his predecessor. During Selig’s 22 year run values increased 9.6% annually—a record for an MLB commissioner serving at least five years.

But let’s be fair, under Selig’s run television rights in general and cable rights in particular, were soaring. In contrast, Manfred has been dealing with cord-cutting for a while, which has slowed the the gains in national media rights deals and more recently pushed Diamond Sports Group, the sport’s biggest owner of reginal sports networks into bankruptcy protection.

Indeed, it is the shift of content distribution from linear to streaming and from RSNs to the league that may define Manfred’s next five years.