Soriano Surrenders: He will Play Left Field for Washington Nationals

Yesterday Joe Rosen posted about Alfonso Soriano's refusal to play the outfield for the Washington Nationals, and how the Nationals had threatened to place him on the Disqualified List, which would have required him to forfeit his salary and would have embarrassed and stigmatized him in the baseball community. A few hours ago, in a sign of Détente between the two parties, Soriano acquiesced and agreed to play left field for the Nationals. An All-Star the last four years at second base, Soriano will now take a new position in what will likely be his only season in Washington, as he is set to become a free agent at the season's end. He intends to return to second base in the 2007 season.

Soriano's acquiescence takes away what could have become a landmark case in sports law, as it appears that no player in a major sport has ever refused outright to perform his assigned job. And a fight was clearly on the horizon: the Major League Baseball Players' Association expressed unambiguous support for Soriano, and Attorney Jeffrey Kessler--who argued the case of Terrell Owens for the NFLPA--characterized the purported punishment of Soriano as "excessive" and possibly beyond the scope of any collectively-bargained provision. Had it continued, the dispute between Soriano and the Nationals would have likely been heard by an arbitrator.

Although the Soriano story appears over, the larger issue remains: Should players be forced to forfeit their salaries if they refuse to play a position? If the answer is "yes," then players need to communicate these position preferences to their agents, so that they are negotiated in the contract. Soriano, through his agent Diego Bentz, presumably could have negotiated a position clause in his contract, but I have not read that he did so. Rick Karcher has written extensively about the failure of agents to maximize their clients' preferences, and it is a subject very relevant in this discussion.

But was the putative penalty--forfeiting Soriano's salary and, by placing him on the suspended list, stigmatizing and embarrassing him--appropriate? After-all, he wasn't holding out or bad-mouthing the organization. Nor was seeking more money or necessarily a new team. In fact, he was more than willing to play for the Nationals, at least under a certain set of conditions. Although I normally take the players' side on matters, I tend to think the Nationals had the right to remove Soriano from the team, or any player who engages in positional insubordination. Soriano's contract calls for him to play for the team which pays his contract and presumably in a way that team deems most appropriate. He clearly didn't like being traded from the Rangers to the Nationals, but then again, whose fault is that? Couldn't his agent have negotiated a no-trade clause?

Moreover, it's unlikely that allowing the Nationals to disqualify Soriano would have led to a slippery slope of perverse incentives in professional sports. Along those lines, I find it far-fetched to think that teams would require players to play positions that those players would find so repugnant that forfeiture would actually make sense -- for instance, I can't see the Red Sox telling a vastly overpaid Mike Lowell, "look, we're going to move you from third base to catcher" because they believe he would rather forfeit his $8 million salary than play catcher (although I wish that had tried that maneuver with Kevin Millar last year, but that's another story).

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