No end in sight to labor strife
One week before the Giants and A’s open spring training, baseball is engaging in its nastiest labor strife since the aftermath of the 1994-95 strike, which lasted 232 days and led to the cancellation of the World Series. There appears no end in sight. On Tuesday, Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, cited in a statement a “record number of talented free agents” are without teams despite an industry boasting of record highs in revenues and franchise values.
“Spring training has always been associated with hope for a new season,” Clark said. “This year, a significant number of teams are engaged in a race to the bottom. This conduct is a fundamental breach of the trust between a team and its fans and threatens the very integrity of our game.”
Clark was referencing approximately a third of the teams claiming they’re rebuilding, though players would call it tanking — slashing payroll and conceding to gain better draft picks and more internationalpool money, similar to what the Cubs and Astros did before winning the past two World Series.
As a result, many high-end free agents remain unsigned, and that’s not a comforting development for a fraternity that has relied on free agency to set the pace for the next wave of players eligible to hit the market.
Pitchers Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta and hitters J.D. Martinez, Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer headline nearly 100 free agents looking to sign with teams that have far fewer than 100 openings on their 40-man rosters.
Commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t take long to fire back in response to Clark’s statement,
and accused agents of overvaluing their clients in a changing market.
“It is common at this point in the calendar to have large numbers of free agents unsigned,” Manfred said. “What is uncommon is to have some of the best free agents sitting unsigned even though they have substantial offers, some in nine figures.
“It is the responsibility of players’ agents to value their clients in a constantly changing free-agent market based on factors such as positional demand, advanced analytics and the impact of the new basic agreement.
“To lay responsibility on the clubs for the failure of some agents to accurately assess the market is unfair, unwarranted and inflammatory.”
The back-and-forth venom is a reminder of an ugly time in baseball, when then-Commissioner Bud Selig and then-union chief Donald Fehr traded insults before and during the strike.
Manfred disputed teams are tanking and said, “Our clubs are committed to putting a winning product on the field for their fans. Owners own teams for one reason: They want to win. In baseball, it has always been true that clubs go through cyclical, multiyear strategies directed at winning.”
The term “labor peace” hardly is uttered anymore. Four seasons remain in the collective bargaining agreement, and we’re hearing talk of a labor shutdown — whether it’s rhetoric or not — with talk of unsigned free agents possibly setting up their own training camp.
Prominent agent Brodie Van Wagenen of CAA Baseball, which represents the Giants’ Buster Posey and the A’s Jed Lowrie, hinted of collusion and said players are “outraged” and uniting as they were in 1994.
“There is a rising tide among players for radical change. A fight is brewing,” Van Wagenen said. “And it may begin with one, maybe two, and perhaps 1,200 willing to follow. A boycott of spring training may be a starting point if behavior does not start to change.”
Van Wagenen alleged owners are colluding, saying their behavior “feels coordinated.” Clark said Sunday that players aren’t threatening to boycott training camp — it could violate the CBA — and the union hasn’t recommended it.
Like other traditionally highspending teams, the Giants are trying to trim payroll to stay under the tax threshold and avoid penalties. They signed one free agent to a multiyear deal, center fielder Austin Jackson for two years and $6 million, and have been more active on the trade market to patch holes, acquiring Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria.
The Giants and other teams are backing off from elite free agents, preferring not to heavily invest in players on the wrong end of 30 and using other options to fill rosters.
The A’s payroll will be among the lowest in the game as they rely on young players to carry the load.
Meantime, several big-leaguers, including Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner, have taken to social media to express their displeasure with owners, but Brandon Moss, recently reacquired by the A’s, said the players need to take blame, too.
The union agreed to a labor deal, further connecting freeagent signings to draft compensation and capping international pools, that’s backfiring and permitting owners to limit spending.
“I feel like we’re starting to have to walk a little bit of a tightrope that we’ve created for ourselves,” Moss told MLB Network. “I think that we have given the owners and we have given the people who are very, very business savvy a very good opportunity to take advantage of a system that we created for ourselves.”