Union talks tough about future contract issues
Despite a shared and stated interest in solving baseball’s on-field issues regarding pace and action, the sport’s labor and management chiefs Tuesday instead dialed up the bitter rhetoric on its economic issues, suggesting lingering resentment over the direction of last winter’s free agent market could poison future discussions over potential rules changes.
Union head Tony Clark fired the first shot, saying the slow-moving offseason market— which left dozens of veterans unsigned until deep into the spring, and others never signed at all — was “a direct attack” on a free-agent structure that “has been a bedrock of our economic system.” Although Clark had questioned owners’ behavior in the past, he had never used such heightened language.
“If that [system] is going to be different,” Clark said in an address to theBaseball Writers’ Association of America several hours before the All-Star Game at Nationals Park, “then we have some difficult decisions to make moving forward.”
Asked if he was suggesting a potential work stoppage when the current labor contract runs out in 2021, Clark said, “Our players . . . are very passionate about the rights they have, [and] to the extent there are challenges to those rights, historically I would suggest those have manifested themselves a particular way.”
Confronted with Clark’s rhetoric, Commissioner Rob Manfred, speaking to the BBWAA immediately afterward, reiterated his suggestion that players, their agents and the union leadership simply misread that winter’s market.
“‘Direct attack’ connotes some sort of purposeful behavior,” Manfred said. “The only purposeful behavior that took place in the freeagent market last year is our clubs carefully analyzed the available players and made individual decisions as what they thought those players were worth. . . . At the end of the year you’ll look at the performance of those players, and I’m pretty sure, based on what’s already on the books, you’re going to make the judgement the clubs made sound decisions as to how those players should be valued.”
Manfred, citing a “consensus” on the part of owners, appears ready to begin substantive discussions about improving an on-field product that has been choked by inaction, with strikeouts for the first time in history outpacing hits this season and the ball in play less frequently than ever. Rules that would limit the use of defensive shifts and/or relief pitchers — both of which have increased in recent years through the spreading influence of analytics — are among the potential changes.
The union historically has been resistant to rule changes, most recently decrying Manfred’s efforts to install a pitch-clock to speed up the game’s pace. And while Clark has previously outlined the players’ concerns over the current style of play — saying some players have told him they find the current game unrecognizable — he has attributed those issues to an unnecessary intrusion of front offices on the teams’ day-to-day and pitch-to-pitch strategies, and suggested Tuesday the players again would resist on-field rule changes.
Manfred said he remains committed to the current postseason format, including a one-game wild card, despite the fact the New York Yankees, currently on a 106-win pace but in second place in the AL East, could wind up in a winner take-wild-card game. The form at was designed to ensure a competitive division race, with the teams motivated to avoid the wild card game.