It’s the bottom of the ninth inning in Minneapolis, and Jake Cronenworth is one mistake away from disaster. Over the last four days, he’s played 36 innings as a position player and five on the mound. If he falls short tonight, in the 2015 Big Ten Tournament final, none of it will matter.
Cronenworth is facing the toughest spot of his collegiate career: a bases-loaded jam with Maryland first baseman Brandon Lowe looming at the plate. The Michigan baseball team’s one-run lead has never looked more fragile.
This is what Cronenworth signed up for two Christmases ago: the culmination of all those freezing Ann Arbor mornings at the batting cages, the countless hours toiling away in the pitching tunnel. The striped sleeves on his jersey still hang loose around the bicep, but there’s a disguised strength behind his arms — the tirelessness of a boy used to carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Cronenworth comes to set position, then stops, calm and unmoving, clenching the ball with both hands. He stares down Lowe. They will be teammates next season on the Bowling Green Hot Rods, working their way up to the major leagues side-by-side. But now, on this next pitch, only one future All-Star’s dream can come true.
***
After three years as a two-way phenom with the Wolverines, nothing got easier for Jake Cronenworth. Like so many of his peers, he spent years stuck in an “endless audition” with the Tampa Bay Rays, grinding his way through the MLB farm system. He was injured, traded and reassigned across the country.
Cronenworth finally earned his shot with the Padres in 2020 after five seasons in the minors. Since then, he’s done everything expected of him and more. He’s made two All-Star Games, hit for the cycle and toppled the mighty Dodgers in the postseason. He’s earned a contract extension worth $80 million and secured his future in San Diego through 2031.
At 32 years old, with little left on his career checklist, Cronenworth doesn’t have to work overtime anymore. But he still spends his free time laboring off the field — only these days, it’s on behalf of his peers.
“Obviously, I always had the dream of making it to the big leagues,” Cronenworth told The Michigan Daily. “But I never really knew all that entailed being in the big leagues. And I saw (union work) as something interesting that I’d like to do in the future, hopefully, if I was able to stay long enough.”
The superstar second baseman now represents the Padres for the MLB Players Association, sitting on its eight-man Executive Subcommittee responsible for union negotiations. And with the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expiring this December, Cronenworth is busier than ever.
In the new CBA, league owners are calling for a hard salary cap for the first time since 1994. Players, however, are staunchly opposed to a cap limit — so it’s up to Cronenworth and his fellow committee members to prevent one. But if they can’t break the deadlock, a potential strike and subsequent lockout for the 2027 season loom on the horizon.
“The most important thing — and we’re the only sport that has it — is a free market system,” Cronenworth said. “We have the ability to go out and sign any length of contract and any dollar amount with any team. You look at the other three major sports in the U.S., they all have salary caps, which doesn’t give them that right.”
In a sport where superstars earn larger-than-life nicknames, San Diego fans revere Cronenworth as ‘Jake the Rake’; his domain is dubbed ‘the Crone Zone.’ Before that, he was Michigan’s ‘Mr. Everything,’ a player who seemingly never took a day off. So it isn’t a surprise he ended up on the front lines of the MLB’s biggest labor talks in decades.
“It’s just how I’m wired,” Cronenworth said of his passion for union work. “I have a little bit of a unique perspective.”
Cronenworth has already achieved his dreams. But as long as there’s work to be done, he’ll always have a dog in the fight. He knows he doesn’t run the basepaths alone.
***
Former Michigan first baseman Jack Sexton needs to correct himself every time he sees Jake Cronenworth in public. They’ve been coworkers for a few years now, but it still takes Sexton a few tries to call his former college roommate by his first name.
“It’s funny, me and all my teammates, we called him Croney since literally the day I met him,” Sexton, now a lawyer for the MLBPA, told The Daily. “So now I gotta get used to calling him Jake, especially in a professional work setting.”
Even though they haven’t played together for over a decade, it’s strange for Sexton to see Cronenworth as anything but his partner in crime. They shared the diamond as starting infielders during their freshman year with the Wolverines in 2013, and their daily routine was like clockwork. Classes, meals, the weight room: all marching in lockstep.
“It almost felt like we were all sharing brains, we felt so close,” Sexton said. “I mean, the hours were insane. When we had a day off, we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves.”
The overtime hours took their toll. Both players suffered injuries that held them out of summer ball, and although Cronenworth recovered, Sexton’s back injury proved to be career-ending. Suddenly, their work didn’t look the same anymore. As Sexton became a de facto player-coach, Cronenworth assumed more and more responsibility on the diamond. Despite his raw talent, he knew dedicating time to his body was his only chance at a full-time playing career.
“When I met him, I was like, ‘Jesus, how’s this kid gonna play for us? He’s got a lot of weight to put on to play at the level we’re trying to get to,’ ” former Michigan coach Erik Bakich told The Daily. “ … (But) all the little things that go into recovery and performance, nobody was better than Croney at that.”
It’s why Cronenworth will never take a break. If he had, he wouldn’t be where he is today.
***
On June 27 1973, owner Bob Short came up with a plan to save the Texas Rangers. His organization had been struggling financially, and he needed to show profit potential to attract a new buyer. Luckily, the Rangers had just drafted a local legend with the first overall pick, 18-year-old left-hander David Clyde.
To pique fan interest, Short decided to start Clyde at Arlington Stadium just 20 days after his final high school game. Team manager Whitey Herzog knew Clyde wasn’t ready and begged Short to send him to the minors instead, but he was overruled and fired three months later.
That night, Short reportedly made more money in ticket sales than Clyde received for the entire 1973 season. Clyde was never offered a raise, and in 1975, he was demoted to the minors with injury. He never threw a pitch for the Rangers again — and four years later, his career was over.
Clyde’s treatment raised concerns that led to the first CBA between MLB players and owners in 1974. Since then, if a player can’t agree with ownership on the terms of their contract, an independent panel steps in for salary arbitration. The process gives players autonomy over their own value, using performance indicators to determine fair compensation. The deadline incentivizes owners to lock down their stars early, and is often a key piece of leverage for long-term deals, including Cronenworth’s.
With a salary cap, however, payroll would come from a fixed revenue projection between the MLBPA and the league. That system wouldn’t just pit players against owners — they’d also be at odds with each other.
“Some of those projections could get skewed,” Cronenworth said. “It gets a little hairy because certain guys are going (into) free agency, and maybe they want those projections to be higher because that means the cap goes up. Then you got a group of guys who are already signed, and they don’t want that to go higher because they want their money. So now it creates an internal battle between the players. It’s just not a healthy system to operate.”
Although the MLBPA has been fighting for decades, the current system hasn’t been easy to protect. When players last went on strike in the 90s, owners responded by locking out the season. Angry fans turned against their teams, touting “Field of Greed” signs in protest. But player reps held firm for seven months, until the league finally relented.
One of those men was MLB veteran Scott Fletcher, Cronenworth’s father-in-law. At the time of the 1994 CBA deadline, Fletcher’s Yankees led the AL East with their first chance at a pennant in over a decade. As a player rep, Fletcher carried the burden of cancelling a World Series his own team had a good chance at winning.
Cronenworth dreams of a championship just as much as his father-in-law. But no matter how many innings he plays, ‘Mr. Everything’ is still only one man. If it wasn’t for people like Fletcher and Sexton, he wouldn’t be where he is.
“You look back at what those players fought for so that I have the ability to do what I’ve been able to achieve in the game today,” Cronenworth said. “And not only myself, but the 1400 players that are under team control, that are on 40-man rosters, you see what they fought for, what they missed.
“You talk to those guys, and you see the passion that they have for what they fought for, and what they have done to grow this game and put us in a position to be where we are today. It’s only our right and our duty to do the same as well.”
As an association rep, Cronenworth can prevent the ownership decisions that ended David Clyde’s career and enable the ones that saved other young prospects like Stephen Strasburg. Cronenworth has spent so much of his life laboring for his own dreams — the least he can do is help the men he shares the field with realize theirs.
***
Cronenworth made the major leagues, but there are thousands of men just like him, with the same talent, the same work ethic, the same curiosity, who never will.
For most professional baseball players, even making a living from their craft is an uphill battle. The modern CBA represents progress from just six years ago — when minor leaguers could make under $4,000 per season — but even for today’s top prospects, maximum compensation in the minors remains capped at $45,000 a year. Nine of 10 will never play in the majors, regardless of how many hours they spend at the training ground.
As the clock ticks toward December, Cronenworth’s workload will keep piling up. If the impasse with owners continues, he may be leading a strike: a potential lockout, a period of uncertainty for the baseball world.
But this is why Cronenworth accepted a seat at the table: because he is unburdened by it. Every morning he spends at the batting cages lightens the load on his teammates’ shoulders. He is devoted to his job, and his job is preserving the work of others.
“What we do isn’t so dissimilar from what (players) do,” Sexton says. “We’re just trying to do everything we can to make every single player in our bargaining unit succeed, and to give them as many–” He stops, correcting himself. “To help them realize as many opportunities as they’ve earned for themselves.”
In his first year of arbitration eligibility, Cronenworth was still in negotiations leading into the morning of Opening Day. But he didn’t even know his extension was finished until later that night.
He was busy at batting practice.
***
It’s the bottom of the ninth inning in Minneapolis, and Jake Cronenworth can do nothing but watch as the ball is whacked deep into left field. He squints as it sails higher and higher, threatening to erode everything his teammates have worked for.
In this moment of collective panic, the boy on the mound turns around with a strange stillness, and waits.
And then left fielder Kevin White is under it, and he is there to make the catch, to finish what Cronenworth started. And there is a roar from the Michigan dugout, and Target Field is filled with singing.
