Union head visits

Tony Clark, head of the MLB Players Association, said it “piqued our interest” when the Angels placed seven players on waivers in August, which was a clear attempt to get under the luxury-tax threshold, but as of now they aren't sure if it's something that needs to be addressed.

“We'll examine to what extent it's a trend and then, come bargaining, if it's something that we need to have a more tangible conversation about,” Clark said. “But at this point we're taking notes.”

Clark spoke to reporters after he and other union officials held their annual meeting with the Angels, before Tuesday's workout. The Angels were the fourth stop as Clark tours all 30 camps.

The Angels made moves that would have pushed them above the luxury-tax threshold just before the July trade deadline, but after the team fell out of the race in August, they reversed course. They allowed five players to go on waivers, and ended up finishing less than $30,000 below the $233 million threshold.

The Angels have consistently come up just short of the threshold, which is precisely the type of behavior

the union wants to discourage. The union objects to a salary cap, and the Angels seem to have treated the luxury tax as a hard cap, even though it's not.

“As we saw over the course of last year, more and more teams understand what it is,” Clark said. “It is a threshold and you have the option to make decisions that go past it. In this last round of bargaining, those thresholds increased. But historically, yes, the Angels have been right up to it and they haven't haven't made a decision to go over it in the last 20 years, give or take.”

Clark also said that there didn't seem to a concern among Angels players that the team is using minorleague facilities for spring training for a fourth consecutive year.

“We haven't heard complaints at this point,” Clark said. “Obviously from a health and safety standpoint, that's first and foremost and we haven't heard that. So we'll we'll see.”