WASHINGTON — The world’s greatest baseball players gathered at Nationals Park on Tuesday for the All-Star Game, the annual midsummer celebration. But behind all the ceremony, Major League Baseball is struggling to process just how those players are doing their jobs, and stinging from a lack of cooperation in solving the problems facing the sport.
The convergence of power pitchers, power hitters and analytics has slowed the game, with strikeout rates at an all-time high and batting averages at a 46-year low. Yet with the players’ association still furious about the slow pace of last winter’s free-agent market, the sides have held no substantive talks on how — or if — to modify the on-field product.
“What we experienced last offseason was a direct attack on free agency, which has been a bedrock of our economic system,” said Tony Clark, executive director of the players’ association, in a luncheon with baseball writers. “If that is going to be different, then we have some very difficult decisions to make moving forward.”
Clark did not mention the words “work stoppage,” and with a collective bargaining agreement that runs through 2021, he has little recourse to change teams’ minds on the value of free agents. Against a backdrop of mistrust, though, the players have been reluctant to address issues that would affect their style of play.
Clark said repeatedly Tuesday that he looked forward to having conversations with baseball officials. But Commissioner Rob Manfred said he had twice offered to meet with Clark this year, about both off- and on-field concerns, to no avail.
“In response to those last two invitations, we still have not had a meeting,” Manfred said. “We are in the middle of a contract; there’s no big rush. I’m hopeful Tony will be able to get himself in a position where we can have a meaningful dialogue on these issues and reach a positive resolution.”
Manfred was less diplomatic in responding to Clark’s charge about the free-agent market, in which many established players were forced to wait until well into the new year — and in some cases into spring training or even the regular season — for an acceptable contract offer.
“‘Direct attack’ connotes some sort of purposeful behavior,” Manfred said. “The only purposeful behavior that took place on the free-agent market last year was our clubs carefully analyzed the available players and made individual decisions as to what they thought those players were worth. At the end of the year, you’ll look at the performance of those players, and I’m pretty sure, based on what’s already on the books, that the clubs made sound decisions as to how those players should be valued. That’s how markets operate.”
Indeed, many of the free agents who signed late have had disappointing seasons, including Jay Bruce, Todd Frazier and Jason Vargas of the New York Mets; Greg Holland of the St. Louis Cardinals; Lance Lynn and Logan Morrison of the Minnesota Twins; Andrew Cashner and Alex Cobb of the Baltimore Orioles; Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs; and even Eric Hosmer, who is hitting .249 with 10 homers after signing the winter’s richest deal: eight years and $144 million with the last-place San Diego Padres.
Clark challenged the notion that those players had proved the owners right; their protracted wait for a team, he suggested, disrupted their preparation for the season. One exception has been J.D. Martinez, who did not sign with the Boston Red Sox until the end of February (five years, $110 million) but leads the majors in home runs, runs batted in and total bases while batting .328.
“It’s sad when we had so many free agents out there at that time; it’s almost like we have general managers saying that teams now are trying to compete for the first overall pick more than the World Series,” Martinez said. “Those are powerful words. I think that’s something that needs to be addressed by Major League Baseball. You have a lot more teams where it’s almost a race to the bottom.”
With several teams tearing down their rosters last winter — or, at least, not trying to improve them in free agency — many fans have tuned out. Twenty-one of the 30 teams have experienced an attendance drop this season, and leaguewide attendance is down by 1,735 fans per game.
Manfred said he believed the decline was mostly related to an unusually cold and rainy spring. But Scott Boras, the agent for Martinez and Hosmer, was not surprised.
“You put out a billboard that says, ‘We’re going to be noncompetitive,’” he said. “It’s the classic soup can you’re going to kick down the aisle, scrape up the label, put it on there and say, ‘Buy soup.’ It doesn’t work.”
The union filed a grievance in February accusing four teams — Miami, Oakland, Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay — of failing to spend enough of their revenue-sharing money on player payroll. Two of those teams (the Rays and the Athletics) have winning records, and the Pirates are one game under .500, but Clark was undeterred.
“The concerns are fundamental,” he said, although he was less certain that the high-strikeout, low-average game was a reason to worry. Sean Doolittle, the All-Star closer for the Washington Nationals, said players were hesitant to trust the league’s ideas.
“It seems like they want these fundamental changes to the game, and it seems like it’s happening without our say, almost,” Doolittle said. “There’s a lot of really good stuff in our game right now, by the way, and I don’t think that gets talked about enough.”
Manfred said he welcomed an open dialogue about the implications of these trends: time between balls in play; the number of strikeouts and home runs; the effects of the infield shift; the use of relievers and the changing role of starters.
“The changes you’re seeing are being driven by smart people who want to win more baseball games — that’s what it’s about,” Manfred said. “The question becomes: At what point do we want to step in and manage that change? This organic change may be driven by competition, but there’s lots of places in life where competition has to be bridled a little bit, and what is the avenue available to you? How do you do that?”
Manfred has formally proposed a countdown clock between pitches, but he insisted he wanted to work with the players on all potential changes. Clark said he wants to meet, too. But as the season pauses in celebration this week, the silence only grows louder.