Tony Clark remains secure in his position as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association despite a recent attempt by some players to oust his top labor lawyer after a downturn in the sport’s free-agency market.
That lawyer, Bruce Meyer, will remain in his position.
“I think that’s been settled,” agent Scott Boras told Sportico on Friday at Chase Field. “It took about a week to dissipate it.”
Several player representatives also said the players are firmly in favor of Clark and the hierarchy he’s put in place.
“I can only speak for our club, but everyone thinks Tony has done a great job,” said Austin Gomber, a left-handed reliever who is the Colorado Rockies’ player rep. “Tony’s had years of experience and has come at this from every level. Everyone in here supports Tony for sure. Whatever decisions he makes for us, that’s the role we’ve put him in.”
Teams can only vote on replacing Clark as executive director, said Gomber, who added he’d heard about similar support for Clark from other player reps around the league. Clark has the discretion to pick his own MLBPA staff, Gomber said.
Arizona Diamondbacks player rep Corbin Carroll declined to be specific about how his teammates feel about Clark, but said personally he has a strong affinity for him, a former D-backs player and player rep himself.
Clark didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Several weeks ago, the news leaked about a three-hour video call during which a number of player reps on the Major League and minor league level demanded the ouster of Meyer in favor of Harry Marino, a much less experienced lawyer who helped unionize the minor league players last year.
As internal discussions played out in the weeks after the initial video call, Boras said, the choice between Meyer or Marino was a no-brainer .
“You have a 40-year labor lawyer [Meyer] who was trained by [former union executive director] Don Fehr and another guy who’s four years out of law school and got some gravitas talking to minor leaguers,” he said. “Bruce is a very good lawyer.”
That dispute came just as Clark and Meyer, among others, concluded their tour of the 30 spring training camps during which a number of topics were discussed, including the much-maligned new uniforms players are wearing this season.
“It blindsided him,” Boras said about Clark, who’s been the union’s executive director since 2013.
The sport is in the third season of a Basic Agreement that was negotiated after MLB’s lockout prior to the 2022 season. It expires in 2026.
There was some consternation among players about the pace of free agent negotiations this past offseason. MLB teams spent $2.9 billion on players, down from $3.9 billion prior to the 2023 season.
Boras had five clients who took all offseason to sign—Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, Blake Snell, J.D. Martinez and finally Jordan Montgomery Friday with the D-backs. All of them signed during spring training for far less than their intial asking price.
The left-handed Montgomery, who starred for the World Series-winning Texas Rangers in their five-game victory over the D-backs, was only able to cut a one-year, guaranteed deal for $25 million with a player/vesting option for 2025 that could be worth as much as $25 million based upon the number of starts he makes this season.
He said his timetable to debut with the D-backs is April 19 in San Francisco.
Four of those five Boras clients have opt-out clauses in their free agent deals, hoping the economic climate will be better next offseason. Martinez signed a one-year, $12 million contract with the New York Mets. Aside from Shohei Ohtani (10 years, $700 million) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12 years, $325 million) with the Los Angeles Dodgers, there’s been a dearth of long-term contracts this year.
“There’s been a dramatic thawing of [long-term) contracts in this kind of market,” Boras told a group of writers after the Montgomery media conference on Friday. “Jordan’s edict to me was signing with a competitive team even if he had to sign a short-term deal.”
Many owners have been concerned about the evolving regional sports network market creating a have and have-not situation. But there seems to be little cause and effect. Teams with solid RSNs, like the New York Yankees and New York Mets, spent a combined $116.2 million this year on free agents. Meanwhile, the D-backs, who lost their RSN and now have an MLB TV streaming model, spent $161.5 million by themselves.
“MLB is going to make more money than ever in 2024, yet nine teams cut their payroll,” Boras said. “When you have that kind of regression in the market, it affects the best players, the elite players.”
And it seems to have caused the momentary chaos in the union.
