As pointed out in Friday’s edition of Say Hey, Baseball, it’s becoming evident that this painfully slow offseason is forcing labor-related issues between the teams and the MLBPA to rise to the surface after years of being settled with little-to-no incident. While the lack of free agent signings is one obvious issue, another issue concerns how a certain pair of teams are using their revenue-sharing money.
The MLBPA doesn’t seem thrilled with what the Marlins and Pirates are doing right now
Saturday’s Say Hey, Baseball takes a look how the Pirates and Marlins are being observed with a skeptic’s eye by the players’ union.
Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images
According to a report from the New York Daily News, the MLBPA has filed a complaint with the commissioner’s office in regard to what’s going on with the Marlins and Pirates. Basically, the players’ union has observed what those two teams have been doing when it comes to their offseason activities and they don’t think that it passes the smell test. Even if you take just a cursory glance at how this offseason has gone for Miami and Pittsburgh, it’s easy to see why the union would find cause for complaint.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports also gave us a reminder that this isn’t the first time that the Marlins have received a skeptical look from the MLBPA — the union wasn’t thrilled with the Marlins after they shed payroll ahead of the 2013 season. We are now five years in the future and even though there’s new ownership, the story remains the same — the MLBPA isn’t happy with how Miami is choosing to spend their money.
For what it’s worth, MLB remains convinced that the Marlins (and the Pirates, for that matter) aren’t doing anything wrong at the moment. According to a statement from the league, MLB stated that the Pirates have “steadily increased their payroll” while “decreasing their revenue sharing” and it also seemed that they were going to go easy on the Marlins since their new ownership inherited a team that’s lost a “substantial” amount of money over the past two years and figures to lose money this year.
While MLB did make sure to note that they haven’t received a formal complaint from the MLBPA, it’s easy to see why the union would be suspicious and it’s also easy to believe that this could be another sign that things are going to get very interesting between the union and league in the future.
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