Baseball doesn’t need salary cap
Ex-UCLA gymnastturned-agent helped seal ace’s three-year, $102-million contract.
Critics point to Trevor Bauer joining loaded Dodgers, but a cap isn’t the answer, Bill Shaikin writes.
Luba’s gymnastics career at UCLA was brief as she did not return to the team the next season, writing on her website that a “multitude of injuries” forced her to retire.
She soon channeled her athletic ambition to a new arena: boxing.
In 2013, Luba participated in the U.S. Intercollegiate Boxing Assn. Championships in the first women’s boxing national championship at the collegiate level.
Luba graduated from UCLA in 2013 before going to law school at Pepperdine. She started in baseball as a salary arbitration attorney with the MLB players association but left “intent on launching her own agency,” she wrote on her website.
Bauer was Luba’s first client, in 2019.
Building a roster
After signing her old college friend and starting Luba Sports, her company based in Maple Valley, Wash., Luba added former Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig to her client list in November 2020.
Puig intended to sign with the Atlanta Braves last season but did not play after a positive COVID-19 test.
Luba also represents professional softball player Paige Halstead, a catcher on UCLA’s 2019 national championship-winning team, and MLB coaches.
Luba’s agency seeks to “offer clients hyper-personalized and customizable representation packages and to revitalize a stagnant industry,” her website reads. A force on social media with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram combined, Luba has brought a unique approach to baseball.
“I want to see a better landscape. I want to see better representation, better branding, better marketing, stuff like that,” Bauer told Complex in 2020. “And Rachel and Luba Sports perfectly align with that, allowing flexibility to players to use the money that they’ve paid their agent in more creative ways and get more for their dollar. They get the same value for the contract negotiation.”