Report: Players pushing for ouster of MLBPA deputy director

As frustration bubbles among players regarding the state of free agency this offseason, a significant portion of their ranks are pushing for changes in union leadership. Reports from Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and from Jeff Passan of ESPN indicate that during a call between union reps and union leadership earlier this week, players pushed executive director Tony Clark to replace deputy director Bruce Meyer with Harry Marino.

Marino, the former head of Advocates For Minor Leaguers who temporarily joined the MLBPA, worked alongside Meyer to spearhead negotiations on the minor league collective bargaining agreement. That agreement was hammered out last year when minor leaguers unionized and were formally adopted by the MLBPA. Marino and Meyer have a “strained” relationship from their time working together on that effort, per Drellich and Rosenthal.

Meyer, 62, joined the union in Aug. 2018 after the union had been panned for its negotiations of the 2016-21 MLB collective bargaining agreement, which was widely viewed as a success for the league. He’s spent more than three decades working with unions for other major sports, including players unions in the NFL, NHL and NBA.

Frustration from the players’ side of things stems from a number of topics. The stalled market for top free agents, the erosion of the middle class of free agency, an overall decrease in free-agent spending and the peculiar J.D. Davis release after he’d won an arbitration hearing all contribute to the unrest, per the reports.

Passan notes that support for Marino’s ascension to the No. 2 spot in the union was not unanimous among players but was broadly supported. Detractors question his youth (33 years old) and lack of experience in high-profile negotiations prior to his work with the minor league union. Notably, Marino was not involved on the call, and Clark rebuffed player requests that he be present. Support for Marino isn’t a big surprise, given the rather surprising 38-34 split of the union’s 72 executive board slots first reported by Drellich and Rosenthal (38 big leaguers, 34 minor leaguers).

The lingering presence of many top free agents has been attributed to myriad factors: uncertainty surrounding the television broadcast rights of roughly a third of the league due to the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings at Diamond Sports Group (which owns Bally Sports Network), a slate of typically high-spending clubs running into top-level luxury tax penalties, and the large contingent of Boras Corporation clients atop the free agent market. Rival agents, according to both The Athletic and ESPN, have pushed the idea that Meyer is influenced and ideologically aligned with the Boras Corporation more than other agencies. Meyer called allegations of Boras’ influence on collective bargaining negotiations “absurd” back in 2021 and has continued to push back on them.

The presence of Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman (and to a lesser extent, J.D. Martinez) lingering atop the market into the late stages of spring training has been an oft-cited point throughout the winter. Someone as vocal as Scott Boras is always going to have his share of detractors — both in terms of rival agents and a vocal portion of the MLB fanbase that sees him as bad for the game.

It’s undeniably been a tough offseason for the top clients of the game’s most recognizable agent, though it’s worth pointing out that beyond the “Boras Four,” his agency has negotiated Major League contracts for 13 other free agents (Jung Hoo Lee, Rhys Hoskins, Sean Manaea, Nick Martinez, Kenta Maeda, Erick Fedde and Frankie Montas among them). That’s not presented as a means of defending the series of disappointing outcomes for the top of this year’s class but rather to simply provide context on the offseason as a whole. Both reports suggest that fellow agents are the root of a good bit of the pushback regarding Boras and whatever influence he may or may not have, though it stands to reason that many clients of those rival agencies harbor similar suspicions.

More concerning than the top end of the market stalling out — at least for many players — is the fading middle class of free agency. Surprising as it may be to see players like Bellinger and Snell settling on short-term deals with opt outs, it’s surely every bit as concerning for players to see veterans like Gio Urshela ($1.5M), Amed Rosario ($1.5M) and Adam Duvall ($3M) sign for a relative pittance after struggling to find much of a market.

Also telling is the dwindling number of long-term free agent deals. There were 17 contracts of four or more years doled out in free agency last offseason. In the 2021-22 offseason, 19 such deals were brokered. During the current offseason, there have been 11 deals of four-plus seasons — five of which went to international free agents coming over from the KBO or from NPB. Only six established MLB free agents have signed a four-year deal (or longer) this offseason, and one of those was reliever Wandy Peralta, who took an uncommon opt-out laden structure with a light AAV after apparently not finding a deal more commensurate with market norms for a setup reliever of his caliber.

As far as the Davis situation is concerned, it’s understandable if players are uneasy with the manner in which things transpired. Davis’ agent, Matt Hannaford of ALIGND Sports, has accused the Giants of negotiating in bad faith, making only one offer less than an hour before the deadline for players and teams to exchange figures. Hannaford said he and Davis felt they were left with little choice but to go to a hearing, which they won — only for the Giants to release Davis midway through spring training at a point when only one-sixth of his $6.9M salary (approximately $1.15) was guaranteed.

Davis spoke to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle about his frustrations over the manner and his concern that future instances along these same lines may occur. 

“If one team does this after going to arbitration then it turns into 70% of teams, what’s to stop teams from just making the lowest possible offer knowing no one will take them to arbitration?” Davis asked rhetorically. “That bothers me for future players in this situation.”

Meyer and his defenders (presumably including Clark) can point to the fact that the Davis situation was actually something that could have happened (and in the past has happened) to any player — and not just the ones who go to an arbitration hearing. Under prior collective bargaining agreements, all arbitration salaries were non-guaranteed unless specifically negotiated otherwise (which was rare). Any player who’d agreed to a one-year deal in arbitration was subject to the same rules: they could be cut for 30 days’ termination pay (roughly one-sixth their salary) with 15 or more days remaining in camp or for 45 days’ termination pay with fewer than 15 days until the season commenced.

That the majority of players were protected from this fate was viewed as a win for the union. Of course, Davis’ concerns that some clubs could just make low-ball offers, push for hearings and then move on from fringe players who best their teams in a hearing is not without merit.

Other perceived wins for players under the leadership of Clark and Meyer were the increase of minimum salary ($570K in 2021, $740K in 2024), the creation of a pre-arbitration bonus pool for young players, a draft lottery designed to cut back on aggressive tanking/rebuilding, and notable increases to the base thresholds for the luxury tax/competitive balance tax ($210M in 2021, $237M in 2024). In exchange, the players conceded to the creation of a fourth luxury tier with particularly stiff penalties and the expansion of the playoff field from 10 to 12 teams — among other elements.

Clark has not made a formal declaration on Meyer’s future with the union. Unrest notwithstanding, it’s not yet clear whether any significant changes to union leadership will be made.