Major League Baseball and its member teams have never been completely up to snuff with their handling of sexual assault or harassment situations involving players or employees. The recent story involving Twins player Miguel Sano is one of the most glaring examples of how even with a comprehensive policy in place, the league doesn’t necessarily make the correct decisions concerning victims, abusers, and possible punishment.
On Thursday, The Daily Beast broke a story about a minor league player released from the Dodgers’ system in 2015 after he allegedly sexually harassed a hotel maid while training in Arizona, only for that player to be signed by another team in the league and play minor league games for them (the team is not identified in the article and he is apparently no longer an active roster member for them either).
Among the emails The Daily Beast acquired of Dodgers employees discussing the incident and the subsequent release are concerning acknowledgements of what happened. Former head of player development and now-Phillies manager Gabe Kapler said,
“his report made me feel embarrassed for our organization. I assured him that we’d address the situation swiftly and that this would not be an issue going forward.”
Robert Barinas, manager of international scouting, said at one point,
“what I see on this [email] thread cannot be taken lightly. [He] crossed a line and is extremely lucky he isn’t in jail.”
Yet later on in the emails Barinas also hedges when it comes to possible punishment for the player in the wake of his actions, writing,
“AZ Instructs [a postseason development program] is a privilege. Sending him home isn’t a punishment in my mind. His actions just show us that he doesn’t yet deserve that privilege. I suggest we have him report to [Dominican Republic] Instructs to learn more about what we stand for as an organization in an environment more suitable to his maturity level and understanding of American culture. This is my initial reaction, I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.”
According to TDB the player was indeed sent back to Latin America, but wasn’t officially released until a few months later. Because this was handled as an “internal matter,” as MLB puts it, we don’t know the player or whether the team was even required to tell the league who it was. A police report was never filed, at request of the victim. There’s also no clear evidence whether the second, unnamed, minor league team was aware of the incident before adding the player to their system.
Because of the murkiness surrounding this situation, and the gaps in MLB’s Domestic Abuse and Sexual Harassment policy concerning minor leaguers, national women’s group UltraViolet is calling for the league to implement a broader and more comprehensive policy that encompasses all players at all levels.
Among other things, UltraViolet “demand[s] accountability from individuals, the media, and institutions that perpetuate sexist narratives or seek to limit the rights, safety, and economic security of women.” In a statement the group said,
“Major League Baseball’s workplace sexual harassment policy is meaningless if it welcomes a sexual abuser back to the job. The Dodgers’ and MLB’s failure to communicate across teams that a player was dismissed for sexual harassment and assault amounts to serious incompetence and negligence—and puts women’s lives at risk.
“If the MLB is truly committed to stamping out sexual abuse within its organization, then it must implement a league-wide sexual harassment policy that covers both major and minor league players—so that not one more perpetrator slips through the cracks.”
The instincts here are correct, there should absolutely be a sexual harassment policy that gives MLB purview over all active sexual harassment allegations or punishments across all teams. Even if they still left punishment of minor leaguers for such transgressions up to individual teams’ internal processes.
In the press release from the original announcement of the league’s Domestic Abuse and Sexual Harassment Policy in 2015, one passage says “In addition, the Commissioner’s Office will implement additional policies to cover Minor League players, all employees of Major or Minor League clubs and MLB. The MLBPA will also implement an all-encompassing domestic policy for its staff.” There’s no sign this has ever been put in place, and three years passing between that claim and right now is too long to let that plan sit on the shelf.
However, even a more overarching policy is not a guarantee that minor leaguers would be more appropriately punished for these allegations or that the chain of information would be more clear in cases such as this. If, like happened with the Dodgers, the team found out something like this from the hotel directly and the Office of the Commissioner never gets looped in, what’s to stop them from simply staring the same style of email chain and come to the same conclusion: this is bad, yes, but the player will continue getting paid and sent to a different training location and eventually he won’t be our problem.
Unless allegations are made publicly or a police report is filed for people to find, the league doesn’t have an enforcement structure in place that ensures it a similar situation would have a different outcome next time. Would teams themselves be punished if the league eventually found emails of this nature, and discovered the allegations against the player and any discipline wasn’t officially documented in the organization?
Furthermore, even with high profile allegations the league has shown a lack of tact and clarity in its investigations and punishments. Sano was never punished despite the victim speaking in detail about her ordeal. An investigation into Addison Russell (suspended in early October) was open for a year and no one, not even his own manager, was aware that the league never officially closed the inquiry.
A sexual harassment policy that applies to all players at any level as well as league employees is important for the league to have. But until the league also confronts how its front office and the front offices of all of 30 teams handles and documents abuse or harassment cases, a broader policy would be an empty gesture.
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