After Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper got in the face of Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred during a heated meeting last week, Mark DeRosa, a former big leaguer who now works for Manfred, said something some players took as a threat, according to four people who attended the meeting or were briefed on it.
“The commissioner’s a powerful guy, don’t f— around with him,” was the tone of DeRosa’s message.
Some players were angry at his implication that a commissioner, who has oversight of so many on- and off-field personnel and processes in the sport, could retaliate if they didn’t fall in line with what a commissioner wants, the sources said. After DeRosa’s statement, a player in the room raised the possibility of MLB using the drug-testing program as a means of retribution.
However, DeRosa, an MLB Network broadcaster and 16-year major-league veteran, said he was just joking when reached by The Athletic.
“Shame on me for thinking I had a better relationship with some of the players in there than I guess I do,” said DeRosa, who is also the manager of Team USA during the World Baseball Classic. “The comment I made was completely in jest, completely kidding, amongst a group of about 10-12 players. Guys were laughing, guys were joking. I had managed some of them with Team USA, I had played with Bryce in 2012. Literally making a joke.”
Earlier in the meeting, Harper, one of the game’s best-known players, challenged Manfred over the possibility of a salary cap, as first reported Monday by ESPN and the New York Post. “If you’re talking about a salary cap you can get the f— out,” Harper said. After Manfred’s portion of the meeting was over, DeRosa stuck around to talk further.
Harper, one of the game’s best players and highest earners on a 13-year, $330 million contract, would have been the type of free agent hurt most by the implementation of a limit on salaries. If MLB proposes a cap, as many in the industry expect, MLB will likely advertise benefits to lower earners. But the MLBPA’s position has long been that a cap hurts all players, not just its top earners.
In a statement to The Athletic, agent Scott Boras explained why Harper feels so strongly about a cap.
“Young players need to talk with veterans like Harper,” Boras said Monday. “Harper has been fighting the consequences of caps his whole life. Harper received the potential for a total of $10.9 million, $9.9 million plus $1 million in roster bonuses, for his draft signing in 2010.
“Two years later, in 2012, a draft cap was implemented and the top-paid player in the draft, Byron Buxton, got $6 million. Fifteen drafts later, the top player is receiving $9.25 million, well below Harper. Harper knows what caps can do to players’ rights, especially young players.”
Before Monday’s game between the Phillies and Chicago White Sox, Harper acknowledged the situation but said he wasn’t going to get into any additional detail.
“Everybody saw the words and everything that happened, but I don’t wanna say anything more than that. I want to focus on my teammates and our union as a whole and just worry about winning baseball,” he said.
MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association declined comment.
Bryce Harper is exactly the type of star player whose free agency would have been most impacted by a salary cap. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
The Harper and DeRosa episode is the latest development in an increasingly controversial series of meetings Manfred has been holding with each team annually.
This year, Manfred has been talking to players about economics during the meetings in a way that is suggestive of a cap, which MLB does not have but owners have long sought, to great resistance from the players. The meetings come at a time when labor tensions are rising overall: collective bargaining between owners and players is likely to begin next spring, ahead of another potential lockout in December 2026 at the end of the current agreement.
The meeting with the Phillies, some details of which were first reported by The Bandwagon, was the longest session Manfred has held yet, lasting over an hour. Numerous Phillies veteran players left disappointed in the tone the commissioner and DeRosa took, believing all it did was create a deeper distrust, attendees said. One player said Manfred “should have just said the words out loud” — referring to a salary cap.
The union has been generally leery of what’s gone on in Manfred’s meetings with teams. Manfred explained his approach to them in a public setting in June.
“There seems to be kind of a mismatch between what we see at the union leadership level and what the players are thinking,” Manfred said then.
“The strategy is to get directly to the players,” Manfred continued. “I don’t think the leadership of this union is anxious to lead the way to change. So we need to energize the workforce in order to get them familiar with or supportive of the idea that maybe change in the system could be good for everybody.”
Newly introduced Hall of Famer CC Sabathia, another league employee, sometimes goes to Manfred’s team meetings as well. Sabathia also has a role in a group Manfred organized called the Commissioner Ambassador Program, which is composed of highly respected, retired players. The commissioner’s office uses the group in a variety of ways, but the players’ union thinks that includes advocacy for Manfred’s bargaining positions. (DeRosa is not formally in that group, but serves a similar function in his role with MLB.)
Tony Clark, the head of the MLBPA and a playing contemporary of virtually all of the CAP participants, told The Athletic this month that he has advised players in CAP “to stay away from the conversations about labor.”
When approached by The Athletic on the topic, Manfred said, “They’re not out there carrying my water on what I think on any topic, forget labor.”
Earlier in July, the MLBPA’s second-in-command, deputy Bruce Meyer, was critical of Manfred’s meetings on the television show Foul Territory.
“I will say, there are players who are being paid by MLB and who are going with Rob to the locker rooms and trying to sell players on a system that this union has historically thought was bad for players, and that they themselves didn’t have to live under when they played,” Meyer said on the show.
Harper has generally been quiet on labor issues in the past, and doesn’t expect to be more outspoken now, despite this incident. He said he is involved in labor issues, and will continue to be, but not in a front-facing way.
“I’ve talked labor, and I’ve done it in a way that I don’t need to talk to the media about it,” Harper said. “I don’t need it out there. It has nothing to do with media or anybody else. It’s what we can as players and owners and everybody else can come together to try to make this game great. I’ve always been very vocal, just not in a way that people can see.”
(Top photo of Manfred and DeRosa: Rob Tringali / WBCI / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
