Guardians relief ace loses out on chance to alter MLB labor history after player vote

Earlier this week the baseball landscape was rocked to core when Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark abruptly announced his resignation. 

And it didn’t take long for us to find out why, as The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough reported not long after that Clark had resigned due to an inappropriate relationship he had with his sister-in-law.  

While that development would be a bad thing for the Players Association regardless of when it happened, Clark’s resignation came at a time when the union was already under investigation due to purported improperities. 

Oh yeah, and there’s the matter of the looming labor negotiations that are set to occur after the current CBA ends in December. 

On Tuesday Clark was set to begin his annual tour of all 30 MLB clubs, where his first stop was ironically with the Guardians. But instead the Players Association was forced into a sudden vote to try to figure out his replacement. 

And after a day of deliberation, the MLBPA staffer, eight-player executive subcommittee and team reps all met to vote on a new leader — and the list of candidates included a familiar face in Andrew Miller.  

According to Yahoo Sports’ Jake Mintz, Miller was on the shortlist of candidates to lead the Players Association alongside Matt Nussbaum, Kevin Slowey and Bruce Meyer, who was eventually picked for the role. 

Former Guardians pitcher Andrew Miller misses out on chance to lead MLB Players Association

While seeing Miller’s name among the list of candidates is a fun bit of trivia for Guardians fans, Meyer’s selection seemed like a bit of a forgone conclusion.

Meyer, who was previously serving as the MLBPA’s deputy director, will now lead the union as the “interim” director, though he’s also going to act as the MLBPA’s chief negotiator through the CBA talks. 

Miller’s name being included in the running for the position isn’t a huge surprise given that he’s spent the past year and a half working as the MLBPA’s special assistant for strategic initiatives.

While Miller had a 16-year playing career, his best seasons came during his three year run in Cleveland highlighted by a 2016 season where he nearly pitched Cleveland to a World Series win. The Guardians let him go after the 2018 season, and he finished his career with three seasons with the Cardinals before retiring after 2021. 

Miller also served on the MLBPA’s union eight-man subcommittee that helped restart MLB during the COVID pandemic in 2020 along with assisting with labor bargaining in 2021-22.

But that impressive résumé wasn’t able to stand up to Meyer, who had three decades of experience working with the NFL, NBA and NHL unions prior to joining the MLBPA in 2018. 

Now he’s going to be tasked with leading the MLBPA through one of the most important periods in the sport’s history. And even though Miller won’t be the head man throughout that process, it’s hard to believe that he won’t be involved somehow.