Union boss supports Desmond after rocky free agency
The chief of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Tony Clark, has been making his rounds from team to team during spring training to discuss a varying assortment of matters pertaining to each club.
On Saturday morning, the MLBPA boss visited with the Washington Nationals and discussed how much the lengthy free-agent process of former Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond bothered him.
"It is disheartening to think that a player of Ian's caliber would have a difficult time finding a job," Clark explained to reporters. "I don't think it's good for the industry, on any level, to have players of that caliber - both on and off the field - having a difficult time finding a job. I won't admit it, but I'm going to admit it: I've always enjoyed Ian, watching him play. I do think he is one of the best players in the game. So to watch his course of action, how things played out this offseason, to say it was disappointing is an understatement."
Despite struggling to a .233/.290/.384 slash line last season, Desmond hit the open market as the top available shortstop, but was forced into signing a one-year, $8-million deal and having to learn a new position with the Texas Rangers.
After rejecting a $15.8-million qualifying offer in November, Desmond was attached to draft-pick compensation, which may have been responsible for the lack of job offers.
Clark believes the qualifying offer system needs to be fixed and plans to look at tweaking it in the future.
"I think any time you sit down at the table and realize that there are pieces of a system in place that are detrimental to both player and club, it's worthy of more dialogue," he said. "If the player finds himself having challenges and there are clubs who want to make decisions with respect to their roster, but because the system's in place they're having a difficult time making the decision about how to do certain things, that brings everybody to the table to see how you can make it better. I would anticipate that happening, along with a number of other topics worthy of more discussion in an effort to try to keep the industry moving forward."