Work stoppage by MLBPA would have been terrible idea

Super Bowl Sunday has become a day for odd baseball press releases to drop into the inbox.

Last year, the Pittsburgh Pirates took the unusual step of formally announcing position changes in their outfield. Andrew McCutchen was moved from center field to right field, Starling Marte was shifted from left field to center and Gregory Polanco went from right to left.

It turned out to never really matter.

Marte was suspended for 80 games in mid-April after testing positive for a PED, causing McCutchen to move back to center field. Polanco developed a phobia about playing left field in May and wound up back in right. By the time, Marte returned in July, the Pirates decided to revert to their pre-2017 alignment.

On this Super Bowl Sunday, the Major League Baseball Players Association sent out word that their members would not stage a work stoppage when pitchers and catchers are scheduled to begin reporting to camps next week.



“Recent press reports have erroneously suggested that the Players Association has threatened a ‘boycott’ of spring training. Those reports are false,” the release read. “No such threat has been made, nor has the union recommended such a course of action.”

Staging a spring training boycott would have been the worst thing the players could have done.

Yes, they and their representatives are upset that more than 100 players remain on the free-agent market with spring training fast approaching. However, the idea of not reporting to spring training that was offered by some players and agents last week was plain stupid.

The MLPBA agreed to the present collective bargaining agreement just last offseason and it runs through the 2021 season. Not showing up for spring training would have constituted a wildcat strike and put the players in legal peril. Furthermore, the public would not have sympathized with a group of workers whose average salary last season was over $4 million.

I grew up in a union household and am pro-labor. However, I can’t side with the players this time. They put their faith in an ex-player running the association by voting for Tony Clark to succeed the late Michael Weiner as MLBPA executive director in 2013.

Clark made a bad deal with the owners ---something predecessors Marvin Miller, Donald Fehr or even the more conciliatory Weiner never did --- and the players have no choice but to accept it.

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