The head of baseball’s players’ union has strong concerns about the way the sport is being managed from ownership to the dugout, concerns he expects to be a part of the conversation with Major League Baseball during a period of increasing tension between players and ownership.
In an interview earlier this month, Major League Baseball Players Association chief Tony Clark said he has heard from players who are rattled by the way the game is being played and that the input from front offices is taking away from the traditional roles of coaches, managers and players themselves in determining outcomes.
“You hear players saying it’s even hard to recognize how the game is being played,” Clark said. “If those on the field see it and experience it, then those who are watching it will notice, too. It’s not to suggest I don’t like home runs or strikeouts or walks. I like all those things. But I also like more of the strategy and the dynamics that have always determined the outcomes in our games.”
As the All-Star Game comes to Washington this week, baseball finds itself at a point worthy of self-examination. Strikeouts continue to rise. Offense continues to fall. There is less action — fewer balls in play — than ever before. And, perhaps not coincidentally, attendance is down.
During a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation, Clark voiced less concern over baseball’s well-documented shortcomings during the window of an individual game — “There’s nothing wrong with the game,” he said — than he did with what he believes are the forces behind the lackluster product, namely an overwhelming amount of input from front offices.
“The decisions that are being made are changing the game,” Clark said. “When you’re in a climate where the decisions about how the game is being played are being made less by the players who are playing and the coaches and managers who are coaching and managing it, we find ourselves in a climate that seems to be focused in on what everybody’s calling the three true outcomes: the home run, the strikeout and the walk.
“I would argue that there are two true outcomes: whether you win or you lose. . . . I’m not saying data is a bad thing. I’m saying it’s morphed our game and its focus quite a bit.”
Though the union and the league have a collective bargaining agreement in place through the 2021 season, both sides seem to be girding for a major fight when the current deal runs out. Though Clark said he “hopes to have a conversation” about his concerns with baseball officials, he reiterated worries he and the players had voiced in spring training. The sport was emerging from an offseason in which clubs were reluctant to sign veterans. That strategy arises in an environment in which several teams — foremost among them the past two World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros — have actively replaced in-season competition with building for the future.
“This isn’t a player problem,” Clark said. “It’s reflective, I believe, of very deliberate business decisions. Players as a whole compete on every pitch and every at-bat. Our industry is predicated on competition from the top down. . . . What it appears that we are seeing in that regard is teams withdrawing from that competition for seasons at a time. It becomes challenging when it’s more than a couple of teams that are going that route, whereby you have a considerable chasm between those that are competing at one level and those that are competing at another.”
Indeed, at the all-star break, eight of the 30 major league clubs — Baltimore, Detroit, the Chicago White Sox, Kansas City, Texas, Miami, the New York Mets and San Diego — are on pace for about 95 losses or more.
Clark said he also has heard concern from players about the coming legalization of sports gambling, which the Supreme Court put in the hands of individual states in May. Baseball always has had a hard-line stance against gambling — a rule about not betting on baseball is still posted in clubhouses before every game of every season.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has expressed his concerns about the sport’s integrity being subject to compromise should states legalize gambling. But he also has said that baseball must be ready to use it as a positive.
“Everyone recognizes that sports betting can be a source of fan engagement,” Manfred said during a panel discussion in New York earlier this season. “And we’re going to try and capitalize on that opportunity.”
Clark, however, said he and the union heads from the NFL, NBA and NHL are working with state legislatures to make sure lawmakers know what impact legalized gambling could have on the product the players produce.
“It’s one thing to have gambling be behind the scenes,” Clark said. “It’s something else to have gambling be in the forefront and be in the stadium and how that’s going to affect those who are providing the game. We have to have a safe and legally fair system for reporting gamblers who approach players and umpires and personnel.”
Clark and Manfred are due, separately, to address the membership of the Baseball Writers Association of America on Tuesday.
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