I think this is correct, and let me tell you one thing Tony Clark and the Union absolutely cannot do -- force Lester to run the FA gauntlet and perhaps blow his arm out in one of the 10 or so starts he has left this year.lexrageorge said:Gammons is not quite the reliable source he was some time ago. Yes, I could believe Tony Clark and his staff are much more active in reviewing contracts and advising players whether they should accept or reject the deal. And perhaps Clark is telling players to reject deals that he thinks are too low.
But I'm not aware of the MLBPA having the right to reject a deal that otherwise meets the terms of the CBA. There is nothing to stop a Lester or a Pedroia or a Longoria from ignoring the union and accepting a below-market deal. The players are not employees of the union. The downside is that if a Lester accepted a significant hometown discount, and then later needs the MLBPA to intervene on his behalf on an unrelated matter, he may have a hard time getting his calls returned.
So if Lester and the Sox, for example, were to come together and agree on a contract that fully valued him based on recent signings -- which is to say, 2014 off season signings -- there is not a damn thing the Union can do about that. They may dearly wish him to auction himself after this season; they cannot force it.
As a practical matter then, even if one assumes the Union has some sort of veto power over below market contracts, it doesn't matter. It does not matter because Lester is highly unlikely to agree at this point to anything less than full value based on last offseason, and it does not matter because Lester is almost certainly gone if he hits FA.