As baseball heads toward its All-Star showcase at Citizens Bank Park, the bigger conversation around the sport has nothing to do with the festivities on the field. The looming issue is labor, and for the Phillies, Garrett Stubbs is making it clear where he stands.
Stubbs, Philadelphia’s backup catcher and the club’s union representative, has held that role for three straight years. With the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire on Dec. 1, the possibility of a winter lockout has become a real concern around the league, especially with plenty of owners pushing for a salary cap. The players’ union is firmly against that idea, and the tension has raised fears that the 2027 MLB season could be put at risk.
Major League Baseball is also seeking sweeping changes to the amateur draft process. One of its proposals would prevent prospects from being drafted until they are two years removed from high school graduation, similar to the NBA’s rule that players must be 19 and one year out of high school before entering its draft.
Stubbs didn’t hide his reaction to that approach.
“It’s a bummer that the league starts in an unserious place like that,” Stubbs said. “I mean, everyone can see it.
The rhetoric needs to change around it so we can actually get to the table and start talking. And we’re trying to get to the table and start talking now so that we don’t have any sort of work stoppage in the future, but if you’re going to start in places like that, you know, I don’t know where we head from there.”
He also pointed back to a tense meeting last year in the Phillies clubhouse with commissioner Rob Manfred. Stubbs was with the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs at the time, but he said the veterans in the room understood exactly what was happening.
“It’s probably the most veteran clubhouse around the league, if not one of. Guys have seen multiple labor negotiations happen,” Stubbs, who was on the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs at the time of the meeting, said.
“They understand the dynamic between the league and the players. And unfortunately, Manfred has kind of created a rhetoric between players and the league that isn’t a positive one.
“He always comes into the locker room and tries to act like nothing’s wrong and that, ‘We’re trying to make the player’s situation better and this is supposed to be a conversation and we want this to be something good for the players and something good for the league.’ But then you see (draft) proposals like that.
So how are we supposed to look at a proposal like that? You’re telling us that you want to start a conversation and listen to us?”
The last MLB labor stoppage that actually wiped out games came in 1994, when the season was halted in August and never resumed, leaving the playoffs and World Series canceled. The strike didn’t end until April 1995, and the sport spent years trying to recover from the damage.
Stubbs, 33, is in his fifth season with Philadelphia. In 20 games this year, he has five hits, two runs batted in and a .179 batting average.
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