Sports agent slams Oakland Ballers over alleged mistreatment of players
OAKLAND -- As the Oakland Ballers baseball team battles for position in the Pioneer League, team leadership is in a fight of its own. An agent for some of the players has gone public, accusing the team of mistreatment.
On Friday, July 22, the Oakland Ballers released a statement to fans which had less to do with baseball and more to do with damage control. In it, the team said, "We continue to work hard each and every day to build something great. We always knew there would be missteps and hard days along the way."
It was a response to criticism leveled at the team by professional sports agent Lonnie Murray. She posted comments on X, saying she had requested and received trades for three of her players: Trevor Halsema, Austin Davis and Miles Jefferson who suffered a season-ending ligament tear.
"I highly question what they truly think about players," Murray said in an interview. "I have always looked at players as individuals and I question if the way that they look at players is as simply property."
Murray said the injured Jefferson went two and half months without being seen by a doctor and eventually had to pay for his own MRI. She said she had taken her concerns to former manager Micah Franklin.
"Micah says, 'Lonnie, just be patient. I'm getting a meeting with the owners.'" Murray said. "Great. He then lets me know 'I had a meeting with the owners. Give them a couple days to figure it out.' Couple of days later, Micah was fired."
There were also concerns about safety, with the team's housing changing twice after three instances of street crime against players within a week. The team said it will not comment on reasons for the trades or Franklin's dismissal but Ballers co-founder Paul Freedman said the complaints seem to be coming from one voice.
"There is an agent who has made claims about the situation of the players in our organization," he said. "We take the subject matter of those claims to be very serious. Player safety is incredibly important to us. Player health is incredibly important to us. We think the fact pattern demonstrates that we took those issues extremely seriously."
Freedman said that, to his knowledge, Jefferson suffered a minor injury on June 4 and another more serious injury in July. He said the team is investigating the timeline now but he said the owners felt it was important to respond to the allegations.
"Our fans were asking us for a statement. They wanted to hear from us what was going on," Freedman said. "There's a lot of confusion and chatter so we felt obligated to tell them in our voice what was happening."
From the beginning, the Oakland Ballers has been billed as a team dedicated to the community so, Freedman said, they feel an obligation to be more transparent than other teams might be in a similar situation.
"It wouldn't happen in any other indy ball team in the country. Wouldn't happen at most minor league teams in the country. To some extent, we take that as an honor because we think it shows we're building something really bigger, something more special."
Ballers officials said they will provide information about the trades of Trevor Halsema and Austin Davis on Monday, as per league rules. They said Miles Jefferson has been released from the team after his season-ending injury.