Last October, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging Major League Baseball’s minor-league pay practices scored an important, albeit preliminary, victory when the court tentatively certified the case as a collective-action lawsuit. As I noted at the time, this meant that rather than have to file individual lawsuits for every player allegedly denied the minimum wage or overtime, current and former minor-league players could instead opt-in to the existing litigation and have their claims against MLB tried together in the existing case (a much more efficient and less costly proposition).

As I also noted at the time, however, this initial victory was potentially short-lived. Under the applicable legal rules, even though the court had preliminarily certified the minor leaguers’ case as a collective action, the court withheld a final judgment on the matter until after the parties had gathered more evidence regarding the extent to which the players’ legal claims were “similarly situated” to one another’s (i.e., whether the work experiences and legal claims of the plaintiffs already named in the lawsuit were roughly equivalent to those of the rest of the players who might join the case).

That additional evidence has now been collected and, on Thursday evening, the judge in the minor-league wage lawsuit ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to show that their cases were similarly situated. Thus, the judge “decertified” the case as a collective action.

This means that the roughly 2,200 current and former minor-league players who had joined the case since October have now been tossed back out of the lawsuit. These players must now instead file their own individual lawsuits against MLB should they wish to seek compensation for their alleged underpayment.

Perhaps more importantly, Thursday’s ruling also dramatically lowers the odds that the existing lawsuit will force MLB to make significant, league-wide changes to its minor-league pay practices. Thus, the decision represents a major victory for the league in the minor-league wage litigation.

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After having been permanently suspended from baseball for performance-enhancing-drug use, relief pitcher Jenrry Mejia announced this past March that he would be challenging his suspension in court, insisting that he’d been wrongfully accused of using PEDs. Mejia even went so far as to hire an attorney, Vincent White, who levied some pretty serious accusations against Major League Baseball. In particular, White contended that he had discovered evidence that the league had illegally hacked into MLB players’ social-media accounts in order to obtain evidence of their PED usage.

Despite the salacious nature of these allegations, Mejia has, to date, not yet elected to make good on his threat of filing suit against MLB. Mejia’s apparent unwillingness to sue hasn’t stopped his attorney from pursuing a case against the league, however.

This past Monday, White sent out a press release announcing that he would file a new lawsuit against MLB on Thursday, a case that he claimed was based on a “multi year investigation” that would bring to light “corrupt mob-like activity” by the league. Rather than filing the suit on behalf of Mejia, however, it turns out that White is instead representing Neiman Nix, a former 29th-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Reds, who went on to establish both his own baseball training academy, as well as an anti-aging clinic, in Florida.

Nix contends that MLB intentionally interfered with both of these business endeavors, perhaps most notably by subjecting his anti-aging clinic to many of the same, allegedly unsavory investigation techniques that the league used during the midst of the Biogenesis scandal. Nix’s lawsuit thus seeks to hold the league legally responsible for his resulting financial losses.

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As has become customary, both Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and Tony Clark, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, held press conferences during All-Star week to field questions regarding various issues affecting the game. Unsurprisingly, one of the issues about which both men were asked concerned the ongoing litigation over the allegedly illegally low wages paid to minor-league players.

For his part, Manfred insisted that the minor-league wage debate “is not a dollars and cents issue” for the league. Instead, he asserted that the league was merely concerned with the feasibility of applying these laws to professional athletes:

“I want to take extra BP — am I working, or am I not working? Travel time. You know, is every moment that you’re on the bus, is that your commute that you don’t get paid for? Or is that working time? Where’s the clock, who’s going to punch a clock keep track of those hours?”

“Who’s going to keep track of those hours? When you’re eating in a clubhouse with a spread that the employer provides, is that working time, or is that your lunch break? We can figure out the economics. The administrative burden associated with the application of these laws to professional athletes that were never intended to apply for professional athletes is the real issue.”

Meanwhile, Clark contended that his hands are tied on the matter, since the MLBPA does not currently represent most minor-league players, and thus “legally [doesn’t] have the ability to negotiate on their behalf.”

To some extent, both Manfred and Clark expressed fair and legitimate concerns regarding the issue. At the same time, however, further examination reveals that both statements appear to be somewhat disingenuous.

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Rightly or wrongly, minor-league baseball teams believe the ongoing, class-action lawsuit over minor-league players’ wages presents something of an existential threat. As has been previously discussed here on a variety of occasions, the litigation contends, in short, that many minor league players’ salaries — which can run as low as $3,300 per year — violate the federal minimum wage and overtime laws.

Even though minor-league teams are not actually responsible for their players’ salaries — minor leaguers are instead paid by their respective major-league franchise — they still fear that a ruling in the players’ favor could be vitally injurious to their interests. As the argument goes, if major-league teams are forced to incur higher payroll costs, then they will likely cut back on other subsidies that they may currently provide to their minor-league partners.

Moreover, the minor leagues worry that, in some cases, MLB teams may potentially even decide to terminate their relationship with one or more of their minor-league affiliates in order to reduce costs. While most of the higher-level minor-league teams would likely survive such an scenario, the minor leagues fear that a victory for the players could spell doom for some of their lower-level franchises, especially those residing in particularly small metropolitan areas.

As a result, the minor leagues announced 18 months ago that they would petition Congress for relief, asking the legislature to pass a law protecting the industry from the federal minimum wage and maximum hour laws. A year and a half later, these efforts finally came to fruition, when a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week proposing to formally exclude minor-league baseball players from the federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the New York Mets announced that the team was demoting struggling outfielder Michael Conforto, optioning him to Triple-A Las Vegas. On one hand, the Mets’ decision to send Conforto to the minors wasn’t particularly surprising, as the second-year player had been in the midst of a deep slump, hitting just .148/.217/.303 since May 1.

On the other hand, however, the timing of Conforto’s demotion was potentially a bit controversial in a different respect. As ESPN’s Keith Law noted on Saturday:

Conforto just had a cortisone shot for cartilage damage in his wrist. He may have a grievance over this option. https://t.co/cvxOrpHVWC

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) June 25, 2016

Indeed, Conforto reportedly was given a cortisone shot on Tuesday, June 14 to treat strained cartilage in his ailing left wrist.

This is potentially significant because Article XIX(C)(1) of Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement forbids teams from sending injured major-league players to the minor leagues. As the provision clearly states, “Players who are injured and not able to play may not be assigned to a Minor League club.” Instead, the CBA requires clubs to place injured major-league players on the major-league disabled list.

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Late Thursday afternoon, Major League Baseball announced it was suspending Yordano Ventura for nine games, and Manny Machado for four games, for their respective involvement in Tuesday night’s brawl between the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles. As is often the case in these situations, many quickly criticized the seemingly lax punishment doled out to Ventura in particular, who will effectively miss only a single start despite having similarly instigated fights on several prior occasions. Indeed, on Wednesday, FanGraphs’ own Dave Cameron had called for Ventura to be suspended for 30 games due to his status as a repeat violator.

Even if MLB wanted to throw the book at Ventura in this case, though, its hands were largely tied. As I’ve previously noted, under Article XII of MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, any disciplinary action that the league takes against a player for on-field conduct must be based on “just cause.” Not only does this standard require that the punishment fit the crime, but also — perhaps more importantly here — that the disciplinary action be consistent with prior penalties doled out by the league for similar conduct.

This presented a problem for MLB in Ventura’s case because pitchers who were previously found to have intentionally thrown at a batter have historically only faced a suspension somewhere on the order of seven to 10 games. While MLB may have been able to justify suspending Ventura a bit longer than that, given his repeat-offender status, any suspension of much more than 12 or 13 games may very well have been overturned by an arbitrator on appeal.

This means that even if MLB would like to take greater steps to crack down on beanballs, it will be hard pressed to do so without the approval of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

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Historically, players selected straight out of high school in the Major League Baseball draft, or those drafted following their junior year in college, were forced to walk something of a fine line. Because the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s rules specified that any player who formally signed with an agent would lose his remaining college eligibility, draftees could not be directly represented by an agent when negotiating with an MLB team.

Instead, players could only employ an agent in an “advisory” capacity. Under NCAA rules, so long as a player’s “advisor” did not directly communicate with an MLB team on the player’s behalf, and so long as the player compensated the advisor for his services (at the advisor’s normal hourly rate), a player would maintain his college eligibility should he ultimately elect not to sign a professional contract and instead return to (or enroll in) college.

Of course, in practice this distinction between an “agent” and an “advisor” often turned out to merely be a matter of semantics. Teams routinely expected (and preferred) to communicate directly with a player’s agent, rather than the player himself, while recent draftees usually preferred to have their agent/advisor negotiate directly with an MLB team on their behalf. So despite their official title, advisors often served as players’ agents, directly representing their clients during their interactions with MLB teams, in violation of NCAA rules.

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Last week, Rian Watt published a terrific piece at Vice Sports on the growing use of wearable technology by Major League Baseball teams for purposes of collecting players’ biometric data. If you haven’t read Watt’s article, go check it out, it’s fantastic. In short, though, the piece explores the ethical implications of MLB teams asking their players to wear devices — such as the Readiband sleep monitoring system recently employed by the Seattle Mariners — that collect data that can not only be used for purposes of fine-tuning players’ on-field performance, but also potentially for roster- and contract-related decisions as well.

For instance, while the sleep-tracking data provided by Readiband could certainly help players adjust their sleep patterns to maximize their chances of performing at a peak level on the playing field, this data could also give teams insight into a player’s habits undertaken in the privacy of his own home. It’s not hard to imagine a team ultimately incorporating such information, or other forms of biometric data, into their player evaluations in ways that may ultimately harm a player’s career prospects or earning potential.

In addition to the ethical considerations surrounding the use of these technologies explored in Watt’s article, the collection of biometric data by MLB franchises also has potential legal implications as well. As Watt notes in his piece, wearable technology may very well become an issue during this year’s collective-bargaining negotiations between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Indeed, Pirates’ infielder Cole Figueroa recently mentioned during an episode of the Effectively Wild podcast that a number of MLB players are growing increasingly concerned over the potentially adverse consequences of the growing use of this technology by their teams.

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This past Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Labor released its long-awaited update of the regulations governing overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Specifically, the new Labor Department rule modifies the FLSA’s so-called “white collar” exception, under which certain salaried workers employed in an executive, administrative, or professional capacity are not entitled to overtime compensation.

Currently, anyone working in a white-collar position who receives a salary of at least $23,660 per year is exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirement, meaning that they do not receive any additional pay even when working more than 40 hours per week. Beginning in December 2016, however, that salary threshold will rise to $47,476, so that any white-collar workers earning less than that amount annually will now be owed one-and-a-half times their normal hourly rate anytime they work 41 or more hours per week.

Because MLB teams employ dozens of front-office and business employees working in an executive, administrative, or professional capacity, and because many of these individuals may earn less than $47,000 per year despite routinely being expected to work more than 40 hours per week, this new rule has potentially significant ramifications for the baseball industry.

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One can be excused for having lost track of the many twists and turns in the long-running broadcast-rights-fee dispute between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals. Over the past four years, the two teams have waged an extensive legal battle over how much the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) ought to be paying the Nationals for the team’s local television rights, with both sides capable of pointing to various victories and defeats along the way.

For those interested in a longer recap of the many ins and outs of the dispute, we have previously covered all of the gory details here on a number of occasions over the last several years. In short, though, under the terms of the 2005 agreement in which Baltimore allowed the Nationals to move to Washington, D.C., the teams agreed that they would renegotiate the television rights fees that MASN — the vast majority of which is owned by the Orioles — would have to pay the Nationals every five years.

Unable to reach an accord on the Nationals’ rights fees for the 2012-2016 time period, the teams eventually took the dispute to an arbitration heard by Major League Baseball’s Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee (RSDC), which ultimately awarded the Nationals $60 million per year in broadcast rights fees from MASN. Dissatisfied with this outcome, MASN and Baltimore then took the matter to court, successfully persuading a New York state judge (Judge Lawrence Marks) to overturn the RSDC’s arbitration decision late last year. In particular, Judge Marks ruled that because the Nationals’ legal counsel in the dispute — the Proskauer Rose law firm — had previously represented several of the RSDC members’ teams, the firm’s participation in the arbitration created the appearance of potential bias by the RSDC in favor of Washington.

As I noted this past December, both sides then appealed Judge Marks’ ruling to the court of appeals. The Nationals argued that the trial court had erred by throwing out the arbitration award; MASN and the Orioles, conversely, have asserted that Judge Marks should have permanently disqualified the RSDC from rehearing the dispute. That appeal remains ongoing.

Washington, however, believing that MASN has been underpaying it for years, is not content to sit back and wait for the appellate process to run its course. Instead, the team is now asking Judge Marks to order the Orioles to re-arbitrate the matter before the RSDC, even while the appeal continues. MASN and the Orioles, meanwhile, have unsurprisingly opposed this request, countering last week by asking the trial court to postpone any future arbitration in the dispute pending the outcome of the appeal.

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