FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: February 21, 2026
The most consequential transaction (if you can call it that) in baseball this week was the resignation of Tony Clark as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Clark, who had been the head of the union since 2013, stepped down after an internal investigation revealed that he’d had an “inappropriate relationship” with his sister-in-law, who had been hired to work for the union in 2023. The MLBPA elevated deputy executive director and lead negotiator Bruce Meyer into the top spot on an interim basis. The timing of the move is far from ideal, coming less than 10 months before the current collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, at which point the owners are expected to promptly lock out the players for the second time this decade. Still, as Michael Baumann wrote on Tuesday, it’s an even worse time for the union to have leadership that its membership doesn’t trust. Beyond the “inappropriate relationship,” Clark is one of the subjects of a broader ongoing federal probe into both the MLBPA and the NFLPA over financial dealings related to the group licensing firm OneTeam Partners, and was the subject of a November 2024 whistleblower complaint alleging him of misusing union resources, self-dealing, and abuse of power. His departure allows the players to better coalesce around their shared priorities.
In lighter news, 12 teams played their first spring training games on Friday, providing us with a perfect opportunity to watch some of the players we covered during Prospect Week. If you tuned in to the Mariners-Padres game, for example, you would’ve seen four of our Top 100 Prospects — including shortstop Colt Emerson (no. 11), center fielder Jonny Farmelo (no. 51), right fielder Lazaro Montes (no. 66), and second baseman Michael Arroyo (no. 78) — in action, all playing for Seattle. The 21-year-old Arroyo (a 50-FV prospect) smoked a two-run homer to right center field on an 0-2 changeup that caught way too much of the plate. He doubled his next time up and finished the day 2-for-2. There are 16 games slated for this afternoon.
We have more labor talk to come in this mailbag, but that’s the last we’ll say about the start of spring training games. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about quantifying the pitcher-catcher relationship, the looming lockout, how teams perform after significant roster turnover, and more. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
I don’t get it why they can’t just do a 1 year memorandum of understanding to see if they can arrive at a agreement before doing a lockout. Yes a lockout puts the maximum possible pressure but it’s a blunt instrument similar to striking that both sides should seek to avoid and at the very least hammer out deals where they can be made on some items before there is a stoppage of play. For context I’ve been involved in much less complicated collective bargaining from the side of management and am currently involved with five bargaining units. Some of the agreements we would like to fundamentally rewrite for multiple reasons (one of which the base agreement is ancient) and our approach has been to offer a one year extension and see if we can negotiate on some of the minutiae and then next year do a complete rewrite though obviously keeping elements from the previous agreement. Dealing with some of the lesser issues or issues we can come to agreement on gives everyone including the unions involved a keg up on the future session which will be much more complicated and where there will likely be some stark disagreements. We’ve been clear and totally transparent with the unions about it. In the case of MLB they could do the same but also work on the more thorny issues with the players union knowing that they would face a lockout if the fail to reach an agreement for the following season.
Because the owners think they can break the union and get a cap if they threaten to cancel games. The threat of canceling games is integral to their strategy. (I don’t know if they’re willing to actually cancel games, I guess we will find out)
I don’t know for sure about the history of your side’s relationship with the unions. But it sure sounds like it is less antagonistic. MLB seems extremely reluctant to be clear and transparent with the MLBPA about anything. And although things have been way better since the 1990s the history of collusion in MLB really poisoned that relationship.
“On the positive side, a history of incompetence & collusion gets you into Cooperstown!”
~Bud Selig
His record is awful.
He and Reinsdorf led the collusion which led to them losing three different grievances.
In response, the owners tried to lock out the players to force them to accept the things they had tried to accomplish with the collusion. Fay Vincent managed to get an agreement so no games were canceled.
The owners paying paid the players $280M to settle, which is almost $700M in today’s money. Then they fired Vincent because they were mad about the failure to lock out the players.
Then they appointed Selig to be the interim commissioner, robbing them of an actual leader during the labor negotiations. Under his leadership, they introduced a totally new system and didn’t ever really come off of it. Then they deliberately failed to make a payment that was required under the CBA. They did this in the season and while the CBA was still in effect.
And because of this the players walked off the job, which nearly destroyed the finances of a few major league baseball teams and turned off an entire generation of baseball fans. The Expos franchise completely collapsed, and Selig later presided over the plan to contract the Expos and Twins, an incredibly foolish plan that was only aborted because they lost a court case because of the Twins’ lease at the metrodome.
And then after they lost the strike Selig wound up turning a blind eye to PEDs because the home run chase saved baseball from total oblivion.
And that’s not even everything. Just an incredible record of doing damage.
I think nobody really negotiates in earnest until the deadline looms, so that’s just kicking it down the road a year. I also think the owners don’t want to be “clear and totally transparent,” especially if a cap is involved since being opaque about revenues is to their advantage when determining where the cap is set.
I believe the players are dead set against a cap, but I also believe it is the owner’s number one priority and they are willing to lose games or a whole season to get it, although Baumann is obviously a lot more plugged in than I am. I also don’t believe Nutting, Fisher or any of their colleagues are really cash strapped. They are just cheap and can get by much more easily than most players with no MLB revenue coming in. According to a quick google search, Nutting has a net worth just over a billion dollars and Fisher is triple that. They aren’t going to be missing any payments on their third vacation hoses if there is no baseball in 2027.
It would be August, at the absolute earliest, before Fisher realized the A’s hadn’t played any games.
I’m not sure the owners are willing to lose an entire season – thinking about the Covid season, the owners pushed as hard as possible to reduce the number of regular season games of possible, but desperately wanted the post season to go ahead.
I might be wrong about this, but the small market owners who want the salary cap the most also seem to have the most to lose from an entire lost season – as a larger fraction of their wealth is tied up in the franchise value, and a lost season would damage that quite a lot.
(I do find it darkly amusing that the owners who are demanding a salary cap would also be (among) the first to decry if someone suggested that it might be good for the fairness of society if there was a wealth/asset cap.)
You may be right and I definitely agree with your last paragraph.
One important thing to remember is that the players make their money during the regular season and the owners make their money during the playoffs. That’s why we have lockouts instead of strikes. If the owners let the players dictate, they strike in September after they have gotten their paychecks, but before ownership rakes in the big bucks. So the owners preemptively lock out the players. This also explains why the owners bargained in bad faith in 2020. They knew that delaying and shortening the regular season was to their advantage.
“I think nobody really negotiates in earnest until the deadline looms” This is the correct answer in a contentious negotiation, especially if one side wants more than minor changes.
“being opaque about revenues is to their advantage when determining where the cap is set”
The MLBPA already receives quite a lot of club financial information. It’s covered on pages 159-161 of the CBA. The particular focus is revenue: this section of the CBA covers the revenue sharing plan. The information provided includes, though, audited financial statements of each team. Financial statements definitionally include a full income statement (revenue, expenses, net income). https://www.mlbplayers.com/_files/ugd/4d23dc_d6dfc2344d2042de973e37de62484da5.pdf
Additionally, the NFL, NHL, and NBA salary caps are all structured as % of revenue, which of course needs to be defined in detail as part of an agreement. Google “basketball-related income” for the NBA, for example. It should not be a surprise to anyone, including the owners, that confirmation/audit of revenue would be part of a salary cap/floor system.
The bigger structural issue is that I don’t see how MLB could have a workable, meaningful salary cap/floor system unless the teams make significant changes around revenue sharing and how they handle local media revenue/rights. I think change on the latter is probably coming at some point anyway, because I’d be shocked if revenue trends on RSN/local streaming are good even in large markets. Those will be complicated issues to work through, though, and it seems that financial distress hasn’t yet hit the big market RSN’s to force the issue. Plus the existing national rights deals are in place through 2028. So I don’t see the owners resolving that stuff among themselves by 2027.
This is part of why I said a one a year extension might make the most sense. It’s going to take some time for the clubs to agree internally on any proposals especially if it involves changing revenue sharing in proposals. There is going to be factions. They definitely will want a harder cap. Maybe they copy the NBAs current version that we have seen has a huge impact even though it’s not a hard cap. Maybe the copy the nfls hard cap. It would be easier to get agreement with the union on an NBA style cap. The current structure is largely copied from the previous NBA version with some twists. It seems more likely that the league wants a hard cap. (Bleeping Dodgers ). If that’s the case there needs to a salary floor and that gets into revenue sharing and that’s where the teams will struggle to come to an agreement amongst themselves. It’s hard to negotiate in a timely manner when there are significant internal disagreements on one side. I get it why it’s uncommon but there are basically two separate negotiates one with the union and the other with the various clubs. I’ve been involved in simpler negotiations where there was a lot of internal disagreements on management’s side and it’s led to drawn out negotiations because it would take a while for management to come to agreements amongst themselves and the internal vote factions would changing. Highly frustrating
I only have one vacation hose and it’s a 50-footer 🙁