Every baseball arbitration decision has a winner and a loser, and when agents succeed on behalf of players, they rightly feel good about the arguments they designed and executed, and they'll do their share of humble-bragging. So will general managers, when they win.
When former union leaders Don Fehr and Gene Orza kicked the owners' asses in court renderings in the spring of 1995, effectively winning that particular labor war, there might have been handshakes or high-fives or champagne, or maybe all of the above. Whatever form the revelry took, it was well-earned.
That's all part of the ongoing business relationship between the players and owners, which is why the union overreaction to a report Friday seems so strange. It has been known for years within the industry that a management championship belt has been awarded to the team deemed most efficient in arbitration, but after The Athletic reported that detail Friday, union chief Tony Clark was moved to issue a statement: