Union, Yankees spat goes public

Baseball union chief Tony Clark called the public comments surrounding the salary arbitration hearing involving New York Yankees reliever Dellin Betances “unprecedented” and “unprofessional.”

Saturday, Yankees President Randy Levine said Betances’ representatives had “over-the-top demands based on very little sense of reality” seeking a $5 million salary for 2017. The Yankees won the hearing Friday and will pay Betances $3 million this season.

“There was a lot said,” Clark, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said Sunday in Phoenix.. “That was most troubling thing. The arbitration has been around a long time. The folks that have been involved in the process, particularly with this particular case, have been around a long time. As you read and heard yesterday, that conversation and the particulars in some level related to that case being made public in the fashion that they were, is unprecedented and is unprofessional and should not have happened in the fashion that it did.”

Betances called it “unfair” to take him into a room to “trash me for about an hour and a half.” Levine accused the pitcher’s agents of using him to chase what Levine considered closer-like money though Betances is a setup man.

“What his agents did was make him a victim of an attempt to change a marketplace in baseball that has been well established for 30, 40 years, and I feel bad for him that he was used that way by his agents,” Levine said after the decision was announced Saturday. “Five million dollars goes to elite closers, people who pitch the ninth inning and have a lot, a lot and a lot of saves.”

The 28-year-old Betances, a three-time All-Star, went 36 with a 3.08 ERA and 12 saves in 17 opportunities last year.