{"id":474431,"date":"2026-02-17T20:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T20:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474431\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T20:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T20:02:08","slug":"tony-clark-to-step-down-as-mlbpa-executive-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474431\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Clark To Step Down As MLBPA Executive Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

12:50pm: Both the piece from The Athletic and an article from Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN<\/a> suggest Meyer is the most likely choice to take over for Clark. The Athletic notes that Meyer recently helped Tarik Skubal<\/a> in his arbitration case where he defeated the Tigers<\/a> and has been working the phones today to firm up his support among the players. The union leaders have a meeting planned for 3:30 Central today to discuss the situation.<\/p>\n

10:07am: Angels lefty Brent Suter, another member of the eight-player MLBPA executive subcommittee, tells The Athletic\u2019s Sam Blum<\/a> that the union has an interim director in mind and is not planning to commence an external search at this time. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have an interim [director] and keep everything as stable as we can this year,\u201d says Suter.<\/p>\n

8:23am: Tony Clark<\/a> is preparing to announce his resignation as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, per a report from Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough of The Athletic<\/a>. Clark has been in his current position since 2013.<\/p>\n

The 53-year-old Clark and the union have been under investigation since last summer due to purported improprieties regarding the usage of licensing money. Specifically, Clark has previously been alleged<\/a> to have given himself equity in OneTeam Partners \u2014 a joint venture between the MLBPA and NFLPA \u2014 and failed to have sufficiently disclosed the level of resources being dedicated to Players Way, an MLBPA-owned youth baseball initiative that is under federal investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clark had been scheduled to begin a tour of spring visits to the game\u2019s 30 teams just this morning, but the first of those meetings (with the Guardians) was abruptly canceled. A statement is expected at some point today, per the New York Post\u2019s Joel Sherman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SNY\u2019s Chelsea Janes reports<\/a> that MLBPA executive subcommittee member Marcus Semien<\/a> told reporters that his understanding of\u00a0 the resignation is that it\u2019s related to the Eastern District of New York\u2019s investigation into the usage of licensing money. Semien noted that the subcommittee has not yet convened in the wake of the announcement, and he thus does not have a definitive answer as to when a new director will be appointed or whether deputy director Bruce Meyer will continue on as the union\u2019s lead negotiator.<\/p>\n

The timing of the move is of particular note. Major League Baseball\u2019s current collective bargaining agreement expires in just over nine months. The last wave of collective bargaining talks between the Clark-led union and the Rob Manfred-led league\/owners collective was contentious enough to result in a 99-day offseason lockout and transaction freeze.<\/p>\n

An even more vitriolic battle is expected by many this time around, with several owners publicly digging in their heels regarding their belief that the sport needs to adopt a salary cap. Any sort of cap \u2014 even if accompanied by a salary floor \u2014 has been a nonstarter for every previous iteration of the players association; Clark has made no secret of his adamant anti-cap stance at virtually every given opportunity, and Meyer has been in lockstep with that mentality as the union\u2019s lead negotiator and No. 2 executive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"12:50pm: Both the piece from The Athletic and an article from Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[219862,99,13192],"class_list":{"0":"post-474431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-bruce-meyer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tony-clark"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}