Tony Clark took over as Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association since 2013. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that he just got a contract extension that will keep him in the post through at least 2022. That puts him in the position beyond the expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement which expires on December 1, 2021.
Having certainty and security in the role is important for everyone involved at this point. As noted, we are three years out from the expiration of the current CBA and, based on general dissatisfaction by many players and agents with it, there will be a lot of work to do in the very short term to get the large and dispersed union membership all on the same page and ready to bargain for a better one. The union simply cannot be in the business of messing with its leadership structure in 2019 and 2020. It’d be a waste of valuable time.
That said, it was Clark who was responsible for the negotiation of the current bad CBA and there are many around the game who speculated that his job could be in jeopardy as a result. Based on the MLBPA board voting to extend Clark, those doing the speculating and those in charge of his job security are apparently a different group of people.
