Latest On MLBPA Leadership

With under a week until the season starts and with three seasons remaining on the 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement, there’s been an atypical amount of drama pertaining to the MLB Players Association this week. Monday evening, reports emerged that a contingent of players has voiced a desire for executive director Tony Clark to replace deputy director Bruce Meyer, swapping him out for 33-year-old lawyer Harry Marino, the former head of Advocates For Minor Leaguers who negotiated the sport’s first minor league collective bargaining agreement alongside Meyer.

As one would expect, there are various lenses through which the current drama is being viewed. Reporting from Jeff Passan of ESPN, from Bob Nightengale of USA Today and from Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic offer various glimpses at a layered, complex and — to some degree — contentious situation that could have historic ramifications on the state of labor within Major League Baseball. Chandler Rome of The Athletic, meanwhile, has published an exhaustive Q&A with Astros player rep and MLBPA executive subcommittee member Lance McCullers Jr. MLBTR readers seeking to get a full grasp of the current state of affairs are encouraged to read all of these pieces in full so as to best formulate an opinion on the matter, but some of the key takeaways are as follows.

Passan broadly suggests that Marino has worked to rally a contingent of players — primarily minor leaguers, whom he knows from his time working to unionize Minor League Baseball — to gain momentum toward a change in power. The now-former MLBPA counsel — Marino left the union last summer after brokering the minor league CBA — has also spent the spring conducting secret meetings with players who are their teams’ union representatives, per Passan. Marino has deliberately avoided clients of the Boras Corporation, Passan adds, wary of the perception that Scott Boras has a heavy influence over the union — Meyer specifically. (Meyer has vehemently denied any such allegations in the past.)

Marino himself refuted the notion that he’s orchestrated a coup attempt within the ranks of the MLBPA. In a statement to Passan, he laid out that players to whom he’s spoken want to know how their union dues are being spent and that they want a new direction for collective bargaining, while also conceding that there’s some understandable skepticism regarding his youth, experience and general unknown background among big leaguers who didn’t work with him during his efforts to establish the minor league union.

Marino’s critics, according to Passan, suggest Marino has ties to agencies in the same manner he alleges to be the case with Meyer/Boras — CAA and WME — and that they’re fearful he could be more amenable to a salary cap than prior union leaders, who’ve considered the issue a strict nonstarter. Others — particularly those whose teams were excluded from Marino’s series of meetings because of his trepidation regarding Boras — feel blindsided by his efforts and think they run counter to the unity he’s preached.

Discontent regarding Meyer isn’t necessarily new, however. Drellich and Rosenthal report there have been multiple requests to make a change over the years — the preference for Marino is simply the latest among them. That decision ultimately comes down to Clark, a fact that has rankled some members of the union. The Athletic’s report wonders whether frustration over Clark’s ostensible decision to side with Meyer despite an apparent majority in favor of implementing a change could lead to a vote on Clark’s status as the union’s executive director.

That’s far from a certainty. For one, Passan notes that Clark is well liked among players on a personal level — even among those who don’t always agree with the union’s direction. Moreover, there’s on-record support from multiple prominent union voices for Clark. In his Q&A with Rome, McCullers makes clear that he “absolutely [has] faith” in Clark and that many union members share his stance. The MLBPA just extended Clark’s contract by five years back in 2022. McCullers also praised the job Meyer has done, saying the MLBPA is in a “much better place” now than when Meyer was hired. He acknowledged that the deputy director’s tenure is up in the air at the moment but doubled down that the decision is Clark’s to make.

Of course, as many readers are aware, McCullers is a client of the Boras Corporation. That might prompt skeptics to be dismissive of the right-hander’s support for Clark and Meyer. But Passan also spoke to former MLBPA executive subcommittee member Andrew Miller — a client of Frontline Athlete Management — who echoed McCullers’ sentiments that he’s never seen or experienced anything that’d cause him to lend credence to the Boras narrative. Miller noted that Meyer was “always a professional,” even when he didn’t see eye-to-eye with him personally.

I believe what [Meyer] has been quoted as saying about it not being true,” said Miller. “It’s not something I ever saw that was worrying to me.”

One of Miller’s former peers on the union’s executive subcommittee, Daniel Murphy, offered a different take — without speculating about a possible Meyer/Boras relationship. Murphy spoke more broadly in favor of new leadership, telling Passan “…guys are finally seeing the truth.”

Boras, who’s already publicly taken shots at Marino and denied having the sort of cloak-and-dagger influence over the union as portrayed in that common narrative, again spoke candidly on the matter after yesterday’s Blake Snell press conference with the Giants. Nightengale quotes Boras again blasting Marino, this time for deliberately excluding his clients in a move he suggests won’t be well received by the union membership as a whole.

“Go to the union,” said Boras. “Be upfront. Let them know what your plan is. If it’s a better plan, we should all listen. We’re not denying information. But when you take a course of secrecy, selectivity, and denial of information from a category of major leaguers, you’re not going to be well-received by the totality of the group.”

Boras further pushed back on the narrative that he holds great influence in the union, noting that he thought the MLBPA accepted a deal too soon during the last wave of collective bargaining — particularly calling out the concessions the union made within the amateur draft. He also took a not-so-subtly veiled shot at Marino and his lack of experience in negotiations of this magnitude.

“I can tell you clear and convincingly that labor expertise and CBA direction is a science of itself,” Boras said. “It requires great expertise. You have to have experience. You don’t see Major League Baseball going in and placing inexperienced people to head a negotiation on their behalf.”

Suffice it to say, there’s a broad range of opinions on the current leadership within the union, on Boras’ influence (or lack thereof), and on how the group should move forward. Some of the Boras narrative could stem from the fact that five of the eight members of the executive subcommittee are Boras clients, but both McCullers and Miller rather firmly disputed the popular characterization. Boras did as well, firmly stating that he “operates for [his] players individually” and “not for the union.”

One notable takeaway comes from McCullers, in particular, who suggested that the entire characterization that the union is weak right now is misconstrued. Rather, McCullers points to the divide in opinions as a symbol of strength — as it’s indicative that member interest and involvement is at an all-time high.

“Typically in the past, it was like the player reps had to almost, I don’t want to say pull teeth, but almost had to really engage guys and really try to get a sense of what they feel and then go to the subcommittee,” McCullers explained. “…I think now, you’re seeing all players across the board — not even guys on the subcommittee, not even guys who are actually player reps — wanting to be involved and wanting to have their voices heard. I think that’s where this is coming from. Guys want a clear, decisive path that all players are behind. I think that’s good. Maybe people want to push the narrative that the union is weak, but at the end of the day, I think the union is strong.”

McCullers noted that the engagement spans all ranks of players, from minor leaguers on the bottom end of the earning scale to the game’s top-paid stars. He recalled an anecdote from the last wave of collective bargaining talks:

“Gerrit Cole is pounding the table on year two of his nine-year free agency deal … and literally said ‘I will miss the entire year if that’s what I have to do to help advance player rights in the CBA.’ He has nothing to gain from that. All he has is money to lose. You’ve seen guys over the history of our union, especially this last CBA, willing to make big sacrifices that matter to them and that affect them negatively only.”

For now, there’s no action that’ll be forced. Clark has heard opinions on Meyer’s status, but the decision on his deputy director’s future lies with Clark alone — for now. Drellich, Rosenthal and Passan all suggest that Marino could attempt to force a vote on Clark’s very status within the union — a full-scale powerplay to install himself atop the union hierarchy. That’d be potentially damaging in its own right, however, as a massive portion of his supporting contingent lies with minor league players and not established big leaguers who form the foundation of the union and who hold a larger number of executive board and executive subcommittee seats.

Time will tell whether Clark feels enough pressure to make a move or whether Marino and his supporters attempt to further force the issue. What’s clear right now is that there are multiple factions, each with their own view of the unrest among the union, even though there are those among the group who will contest that the increased engagement is a sign of strength and good sign for the long-term health of the organization, contrary as it may seem.