Yikes! The S-word was floated Monday at Rangers camp

The dirtiest word in baseball, arguably, isn't the one that Crash Davis used to get ejected from a game in Bull Durham.

It's the S-word.

No, not that one. Nor that one.

Try, strike.

No, not the strike an umpire calls.

It's the strike that causes work stoppages because of union grievances, and the MLB Players Association feels as if it is aggrieved after the past off-season that still hasn't ended for some elite free agents.

The Texas Rangers met with the MLBPA on Monday before their night game at Surprise Stadium, and they emerged from it with answers and hope that repeat of the cold financial winter will be avoided after this season.

The players also said that the union is as strong as ever and is unified in exploring all options when it comes to evening the playing field with ownership.

That's where the S-word comes in.

"Nobody wants that," said shortstop Elvis Andrus, one of the Rangers' two union player representatives. "I'm a baseball player. I want to come to be the field every day. The game is too beautiful to stop. At the same time, we're going to fight for our rights. We need equality for everybody."

The players haven't gone on strike since 1994, a stoppage that forced the World Series to be canceled and trimmed 18 games from the 1995 schedule. The collective bargaining agreement that was reached in December was trumpeted as five more years of labor peace.

The first year isn't going so well for the players, and the concern is that the next off-season will be another difficult one.

Andrus can hit the free-agent market if he decides to opt out of a contract that is paying him $15 million a year. Based on how free agents fared and the teams that can afford to meet or beat that salary, exercising that option in the face of the last off-season might be ill-advised.

Andrus, though, said that the off-season hasn't swayed him one way or the other.

Third baseman Adrian Beltre can also be a free agent, though he said that he is more concerned about the players who are on the verge of testing free agency more than his situation. He has played a long time and made a lot of money, but others are looking at the only chance that might have at free agency.

One such player is left-hander Jake Diekman, the Rangers' other union rep. His future isn't yet a front-burner issue.

"If free agency is the only thing on my mind, I'm not going to be able to perform," he said. "It's out of my control. The only thing you can do as a player is go out and perform and hope you get what you're valued as."

The players are search for answers as to what happened. Critics of the collective bargaining agreement point to relatively petty things the players sought during the last negotiations at the expense of concessions that benefited owners.

MLBPA chief Tony Clark, though, pointed to a high volume of teams that appear to be not in it to win it this year.

"The system is designed to provide support to all the teams each year in an effort to put the most competitive team they can on the field," Clark said.

"And to the extent that some are suggesting that they’re not as interested in that happening — others may not be saying it publicly — but their lack of interest in players that could bring value to help them be the last team standing, not to mention teams that are moving significant amounts of their roster during this particular off-season. All of those things are of concern here, both now and moving forward."

He didn't use the word tanking, but he didn't need to use it. Teams that traded away star players affected a segment of the free-agent market. And when those teams didn't seek to sign quality players to fill the voids, others segments of the market felt the impact.

Players coming off career years had to settle for far less than they would have during a normal off-season. The same goes for players who have been consistently good for several seasons.

"It was a weird off-season," Beltre said. "The bottom line teams are supposed to have a competitive team and, obviously, some teams are not doing that. Players that have been producing for many years normally get many offers and didn’t get any."

There isn't a solution in the offing. General manager Jon Daniels said that the current system still has to play out. Andrus said that players need to gather information and get involved more with the union.

In the end, though, all he, Beltre, Diekman and all other union members can do is wait.

"We are trying to figure out exactly what is going on," Beltre said. "We can’t put a finger on it, say it was this or that. We are trying to figure out what is going on and if it’s going to be a one-year thing, on-going thing, we don’t now. We're waiting to see what is going to happen.

"We have a lot of big-league players and we have a really strong group that we are solid more than people think. We are going to fight whatever time we need to go."

That's another way of saying the S-word.

This is premature, we need to see what is going on and we are going to take whatever steps we need to take to make things fairly.

This story was originally published March 19, 2018 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Yikes! The S-word was floated Monday at Rangers camp."