What MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's 2029 retirement means - ESPN

There will soon be a huge job opening at Major League Baseball headquarters.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday that he will step down from the job when his current contract expires in January 2029.

Manfred, who is in his 10th year as commish, has overseen a period of significant change in the game. With the end of his term in sight, how will he be remembered? What does he have left to accomplish? Who will take over?

We asked ESPN MLB experts to weigh in on Manfred's time in charge — and what the conclusion of his tenure might bring for baseball.

Bradford Doolittle: The pitch clock. That sounds reductive, especially amid the long list of things that have changed and will change during Manfred's tenure, but we tend to remember clear, obvious, concrete things. It's hard to imagine a change with a more outsized effect on the sport, both on the field and as a product (I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I don't see a scenario in which our collective attention span actually grows larger). Lopping off 24 minutes of game time over the course of one offseason was monumental and reversed one of baseball's most insidious trends. But the pitch clock was bigger than just a rule change: It was an avatar for an emergent willingness to allow the game to adapt to changing times. This has never been an easy ask in baseball, a sport whose engrained ways of life have been a doubled-sided coin for most of its history. For baseball to grow, length of game was a fundamental issue that had to be addressed and, under Manfred's leadership, MLB did so with resounding success.

Alden Gonzalez: We tend to put an inordinate amount of weight on what is freshest in our minds, so much of Manfred's legacy will be determined