What Happened To All The Players On The Tigers’ Website?
If you're a hardcore baseball fan a trip to the Detroit Tigers website in December may not be that unusual, unless you visited today and noticed all the players had strangely disappeared.
Today a visit to DetroitTigers.com for tickets, a check of the schedule, or a look at the new Tigers Shortstop Javier Baez, might look a little different, as all the players have been removed from the site.
No, the Tigers didn't cut everyone and decide to start entirely over (although some fans might like that approach at this point), they had to remove the players from the website as Major League Baseball entered its first work stoppage since the 94-95 player strike.
As part of the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, all images of players were required to be removed from all MLB digital properties, including websites at 11:59pm on Wednesday night.
The use of images is governed by the MLBPA, and as that agreement has expired, MLB team has no right to use any player images in promotion.
You're also not going to find any news about current Tiger transactions or players, in fact, currently, the top 3 stories on the Tigers' official site are as follows:
- A letter to fans about the lockout from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred
- Kirk Gibson sealing a 1984 World Series win for the team
- Al Kaline's 3,000th hit, in 1974
The good news is that if the current lockout does last until Spring, it is not expected to have any impact on Minor League ball for the 2022 season, which will be a big relief to West Michigan Whitecap fans.