MLB players union fires two top officials, continuing recent upheaval

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AP Photo / LM Otero Share articleTwo months after players pushed out executive director Tony Clark, the Major League Baseball Players Association has further cleaned house, firing two more top officials. Chief operating officer Xavier James and chief human resources officer Michael O’Neill were both terminated with cause on Wednesday, according to a person briefed on the union’s staffing who was not authorized to speak publicly. The dismissals come at a time when federal investigators are continuing to probe the union and the union is concurrently winding through an internal investigation. MLBPA staff are also simultaneously preparing for their most important job function: collective bargaining with MLB’s owners, a process that is expected to begin no later than May. Chris Capuano, a former big-league pitcher who joined the MLBPA in 2019, is moving into the COO role on an interim basis, while Ian Penny, a high-ranking lawyer at the union since 2010, is now taking over as head of human resources, also with an interim tag. Penny, who came to the MLBPA from the National Hockey League players’ union, was the MLBPA’s general counsel from 2017 until 2022, a role in which he also oversaw human resources. The union’s reasoning for the firings was not immediately clear. The MLBPA declined comment. Text messages to James and O’Neill seeking comment were not immediately returned and The Athletic will update this story if they respond. ESPN was first to report the personnel changes. A lawyer with an MBA, James was once a player agent who counted former big leaguer Gary Sheffield as a client. Clark brought James to the MLBPA full-time in 2018 to help grow the union’s for-profit arms, and the two became friends. The union in Clark’s time did successfully grow licensing revenues. “It was setting up a mechanism for players to even more effectively monetize their intellectual property,” James said in a 2022 interview with The Athletic for an article on Clark’s tenure at the union. “There’s a disparity between what’s generated in the marketing category with the leagues and the teams on one side of the equation versus the player side of the equation. “Tony has been vociferous about making sure the players get their fair share of that pie.” But those efforts have also led to federal and public scrutiny. The union said this month it had shut down a for-profit arm, Players Way, that was dedicated to youth sports but had little to show for its expenditures. A business registry hosted online by the state of Florida names James and Capuano among the managers of the now defunct operation in an annual report from 2025. OneTeam Partners, a licensing company co-founded by the MLBPA and other sports unions with private-equity backing, also drew the attention of federal investigators. OneTeam was established to pursue opportunities of scale that wouldn’t typically be available through an individual sports union’s licensing arm. “OneTeam, because it represents sports across and unions across the board, is able to monetize that maybe even more effectively than we could individually,” James said in 2022. But OneTeam also created a complicated and unusual dynamic for a labor union. A union’s assets belong to its members, and the organization is subject to labor law, considerations typical private businesses do not have. Clark and James both held seats on the board of OneTeam. That board in 2024 undertook a controversial effort to allow equity grants that could have ultimately served to enrich the board members, including MLBPA officials. No grants were issued. “To be unequivocally clear: no OneTeam board member, nor any union employee, was directly or indirectly granted equity in OneTeam,” OneTeam said in a statement last year. When the Eastern District of New York began probing Clark and the union last year, the players hired outside counsel at the firm Morrison Foerster who began an internal investigation on behalf of the player membership. That review ultimately spurred Clark’s firing in February. Morrison Foerster found that Clark had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a union employee, his sister-in-law. The internal investigation was still in process when Clark was fired and his former second-in-command, Bruce Meyer, was selected as the union’s new leader. “It’s fair to say there are issues that will be addressed,” Meyer said on Feb. 18, the day he was voted in. “To the extent that there are changes that need to be made in terms of our procedures or any in any other respect, we’re going to be, in the coming days and weeks, looking very carefully at all of it.” It’s unknown whether the union will make any further personnel changes or whether Wednesday’s firings mark the conclusion of the internal investigation. More fallout could come if the Department of Justice brings an indictment implicating the union or any of its past or current officials. Harry Marino, a former MLBPA lawyer who led a mutiny against Clark and Meyer in 2024, told The Athletic recently that the union has been going through an “an overdue reckoning.” Marino has been critical of union leadership’s transparency with players regarding spending. “It’s pretty clear that there was stuff going on that players needed to be made aware of,” Marino said this month. James’ salary at the MLBPA in 2025 was $727,866, according to an annual disclosure form the union submits to the Department of Labor. O’Neill made $327,250. Penny’s salary last year as senior advisor to the executive director was $877,703. Capuano’s was $492,107 as senior director of business and strategy operations. Players paid Morrison Foerster $100,000 for its work in 2025. The MLBPA reported total assets of about $519 million to close out 2025, its highest figure yet. The union and the league have both stockpiled cash ahead of an expected lockout in December. “The business side is critically important in terms of preparing for a work stoppage,” James said in 2022. “The more business revenue you generate, the more money you have in your coffers. … And that’s really what Tony has kind of preached.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Evan Drellich is a senior writer for The Athletic, covering baseball. He’s the author of the book Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess. Follow Evan on Twitter @EvanDrellich