FREE-AGENT FREEZE ‘OUR FAULT’
As MLBPA head takes issue with teams, others look inward, writes Dave Sheinin.
Tony Clark never envisioned his annual tour of spring training camps beginning where it did this week: inside the gates of the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., at a camp without a name.
It is there that some 20 to 30 unsigned free agents, the human faces of an unrelenting, vitriolic labour squabble, have gathered to work themselves into shape for a season they hope they get to play. And it is there that Clark, the embattled chief of the Major League Baseball Players Association, travelled this week to meet with the players most affected by the unprecedented slowdown of the free-agent market.
“The obvious hope is these guys will be given an opportunity,” Clark said. “Guys will find themselves in (a team’s) camp and that the discussion will be about the competition on the field and about the hope that always springs eternal this time of year. It’s unfortunate that’s not where we find ourselves and that I find myself at a free-agent camp in Florida — and more importantly, the players who are working out here or at home and not in camp find themselves in a position they don’t want to be in.
“Getting back to the game is important, but it’s hard to do that when there are as many questions being asked as there are right now.”
The union’s questions, for the most part, are obvious: why are nearly 90 major-league free agents still unsigned as camps open across Florida and Arizona? Is this a temporary, one-off situation that will ease in future years or a semi-permanent economic shift? And, most pointedly, is there a “coordinated” effort by the teams — code language for collusion — to tamp down salaries, as some on the labour side have suggested?
“Historically, we’ve never seen so many players unsigned at this point in the calendar unless you want to go back to the late ’80s,” Clark said, referencing the period when owners were found to have colluded and were forced to pay $280 million to the affected players.
Asked point-blank whether he believed the teams are colluding now, Clark chose his words carefully and said: “We evaluate every off-season. We evaluate abnormalities and anomalies and once the market runs its course, you evaluate what happened and why. That happens every off-season and it is happening now.”
Much of the union’s questioning has focused on the lower end of the game’s payroll spectrum, where as many as 10 teams — undoubtedly emboldened by the examples of the 2016 Chicago Cubs and 2017 Houston Astros, both of whom went through ugly teardowns resulting in 100-loss seasons before rebuilding themselves into eventual World Series champions — are shedding payroll and hoarding prospects and as such are essentially sitting out this free-agent market.
Commissioner Rob Manfred is among those who have used the Cubs and Astros examples as justification for the downsizing strategy, saying earlier this month that “baseball has always been a cyclical player business. Our fans are very sophisticated. They remember the process (those teams) went through to put themselves in position to win.”
But Clark said it isn’t the strategy itself, but the sheer number of teams apparently embracing it that is the problem.
“We understand teams go through cycles and as a result will find themselves rebuilding,” he said. “We have often had two or three teams at the most who have done that in the past. (But) if you have upward of a third of the league rebuilding, that is an issue because you’ve got a third of the league that is acknowledging they are not interested in winning. And that is not what the CBA is designed to do.”
But Clark is facing other issues besides what the owners are doing. With increasing frequency, the players’ questions are also turning inward toward the union leadership, including Clark himself.
Those questions can be boiled down to a central one: Did the players association get itself into a bad deal with the labour agreement that kicked in at the start of 2017 and runs through 2021 — one that includes more severe penalties for large-market teams that exceed the luxury tax threshold and greater incentives for smallmarket teams to tank?
“What we’ve done is we have incentivized owners to say, ‘ We don’t want to meet that price. It costs us too much to meet that price. It costs us draft picks (and) international signing money,’” Clark said.
Brandon Moss, the veteran designated hitter of the Oakland A’s, said on MLB Network earlier this month: “The only reason those (disincentives) are there is because we bargained them in. Everybody wants to look up and scream collusion, (but) sooner or later you have to take responsibility for a system you created for yourself. It’s our fault.”
Other players have voiced similar concerns privately and the lingering impression is that the players association — which historically has used its uncommon unity as a source of strength in fighting off management — has become fractured. Asked if he still sees a strong sense of unity among the players today, Clark sounded less than definitive.
“I believe so,” he said. “I believe the concerns that have been offered are concerns the guys see. There have been lot of half-truths, some fiction, some not, all against the backdrop of what the players are seeing. We’re obviously having lots of conversation with the players, walking them through the issues and explaining what is fact and what is fiction. We look at that as a positive from the standpoint of their willingness to engage now.”
With Manfred scheduled to hold a news conference Thursday in Tampa, Fla. — amid speculation he could announce the implementation of new pace-of-play rules, having failed to reach an agreement with the union on them — Clark acknowledged the players’ resentment over the free-agent market “makes having a conversation about pace of play more challenging.
“But the commitment of the players in that regard remains the same,” Clark said. “The players understand and are committed to considerations that would have the game played crisply and played the way fans want it to be played.”
Everybody wants to look up and scream collusion, (but) sooner or later you have to take responsibility for a system you created for yourself.