PHOENIX — Just in case anyone had even the slightest flicker of optimism there won’t be a labor war shutting down baseball in December, that was extinguished quickly Tuesday morning with Tony Clark resigning as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players' Association.
The players still have to vote on Clark’s successor, but with less than 10 months remaining before the collective bargaining agreement expires, it would only make sense that Bruce Meyer, Clark’s right-hand man and the union’s lead negotiator since 2018, will be at least the interim successor.
“There’s just not enough time for it to be anyone else," one prominent baseball agent told USA TODAY Sports.
And Meyer, who was promoted to the union’s deputy executive director in 2022, just so happens to be Public Enemy No. 1 for MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and his executive staff.
It’s not as if Clark was golfing buddies with Manfred or grabbing drinks with team owners, but they considered him reasonable, and as a former 15-year All-Star first baseman, certainly had their respect.
Meyer is a tenacious, hard-nosed labor lawyer who MLB labor officials despise. They called him unreasonable during their last negotiations, frequently clashing, accusing him of being bad for baseball. And now MLB could be dealing directly with Meyer, who will spearhead the labor negotiations without Clark’s involvement.
“This," one club executive said, “is going to be a bloodbath."
Still, as another high-ranking agent pointed out, Meyer was going to be the lead negotiator even if Clark stayed aboard. The union’s bargaining committee remains the same, as does the union’s position on matters.
One agent was adamant in his belief that Meyer would not be the successor, and the MLBPA instead would promote another lawyer from the union office, retaining Meyer as their chief negotiator.
The agents and executive spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of upcoming negotiations.
But no matter how anyone wants to spin it, the timing of Clark’s resignation, who has been under investigation into alleged financial improprieties at the union, couldn’t be much worse.
This is the time that Clark and union officials meet with every team in spring training to disseminate information and provide some cliff notes on their upcoming labor strategy, stressing the importance of being unified.
They were going to tell everyone that they won’t even discuss a salary cap, believe that the Dodgers’ $400 million payroll is good for baseball and that the sport has never been healthier. The message they wanted players to convey to the media and fans is that the owners, and not the players, who would be responsible for shutting down the game with a lockout.
The message was scheduled to be first delivered Tuesday at the Cleveland Guardians' and Chicago White Sox's camps. The meetings were postponed Monday evening, and have yet to be re-scheduled. The union had scheduled a tour visiting every team in Arizona in February and in Florida in March.
Now, everything is up in the air as players and team union representatives scrambled searching for answers.
“We’re going to have an interim [executive director] and keep everything as stable as we can here," Los Angeles reliever Brent Suter, who’s on the subcommittee, told reporters.
What does Tony Clark's exit mean for MLBPA?
San Francisco Giants player representative Logan Webb said Tuesday that he wasn’t aware of Clark’s resignation until he saw reports, while New York Mets second baseman Marcus Semien, one of eight members of the union’s subcommittee, wasn’t informed until Tuesday morning.
Semien said he wasn’t overly surprised because of the federal investigation, telling reporters in the Mets clubhouse: “You definitely don’t want things to be a distraction going into December."
It’s now up to the union to prevent the perception that it’s in disarray at a critical time when negotiations were expected to begin in early April, while also trying to determine whether Meyer should be the natural successor.
Remember, it was two years ago in spring training that player representatives expressed their frustration during a three-hour videoconference call that advocated for Meyer’s ouster. There were 21 player representatives who wanted to replace Meyer with Harry Marino, the lawyer who led the efforts of minor league players being unionized. Clark vehemently supported Meyer, and the coup failed.
Meyer was criticized by several agents and players at the time for deferring to the interests of powerful agent Scott Boras during the negotiations, which Meyer vehemently denied in an open letter to players, saying he had never met Boras before being hired.
“From the moment I was hired, if not before, MLB began demonizing me both privately and publicly," Meyer wrote. “Among other things, one of their strategies was to spread the lie that I had been somehow hired at the behest of Scott Boras and was therefore beholden to him. This lie, which has taken many forms over the years, was a calculated (and time-honored) management strategy.’’
Meyer oversaw the negotiations during the height of the pandemic in 2020, and during the 99-day lockout that began in December 2021. The eight-player executive council voted unanimously to reject MLB’s final proposal during negotiations on a new CBA in March, 2022, that included an increase in minimum salaries, a $50 million pre-arbitration pool and anti-tanking mechanisms. Yet, the rank-and-file overruled them and accepted the proposal, allowing the season to be played without any games or paychecks missed.
Now, it will be up to the players to decide whether Meyer will become the union’s seventh executive director, replacing Clark, who was in charge since 2013 after the death of Michael Weiner.
MLB would love for the union chief to be anyone but Meyer, fearing that the rancor between the two sides will only accelerate without Clark’s involvement, but they have no choice.
So buckle up, and prepare for a plethora of hostility and acrimony coming to a bargaining table near you.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB lockout looms harder with Tony Clark MLBPA departure, new CBA
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