Tony Clark Steps Down As MLBPA Executive Director

The Major League Baseball Players Association officially announced that executive director Tony Clark has resigned. Clark did not provide a statement in the press release. He had held the role since 2013.

According to multiple reports, Clark resigned after an internal investigation revealed he had an “inappropriate” relationship with his sister-in-law, who was hired to work for the player’s union back in 2023. Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough of The Athletic and Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN each suggest that deputy director Bruce Meyer is most likely choice to take over. The Athletic notes that Meyer recently helped Tarik Skubal in his arbitration case where he defeated the Tigers and has been working the phones today to firm up his support among the players.

The union met this afternoon but did not vote on the matter. Chris Bassitt, a member of the eight-player executive subcommittee, told The Athletic they didn’t want to rush and wanted to take time to update the union’s 1200 members. Bassitt suggested everything would be wrapped up in 24 hours or so, with a vote on Meyer reportedly expected tomorrow. Angels lefty Brent Suter, another member of the subcommittee, told The Athletic’s Sam Blum that the union had an interim director in mind and was not planning to commence an external search at this time. “We’re going to have an interim [director] and keep everything as stable as we can this year,” says Suter.

The 53-year-old Clark and the union had been under investigation since last summer due to purported improprieties regarding the usage of licensing money. Specifically, Clark has previously been alleged to have given himself equity in OneTeam Partners — a joint venture between the MLBPA and NFLPA — 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. The union hired a law firm to conduct an internal investigation in response to those allegations. That internal probe reportedly uncovered messages between Clark and his sister-in-law, which led the union to seek his resignation.

Clark had been scheduled to begin a tour of spring visits to the game’s 30 teams just this morning, but the first of those meetings (with the Guardians) was abruptly canceled. The timing of the move is of particular note. Major League Baseball’s 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.

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 — even if accompanied by a salary floor — 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’s lead negotiator and No. 2 executive.

Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough of The Athletic first reported that Clark was resigning. Jeff Passan of ESPN first reported the “inappropriate relationship.”