While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Month: July 2019
Unlock with PatreonThe MLBPA’s recent firing shouldn’t be controversial, and yet
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
The Major League Baseball Players Association recently fired a long-term attorney, Rick Shapiro, and as Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich report, it’s causing waves both internally and externally. Per that report, Shapiro was dismissed by the MLBPA as a way of shoring up solidarity. Agents, though, are concerned that this is the influence of Scott Boras, and that there will be downsides to getting rid of someone with Shapiro’s experience.
That’s the short of it, but something like this requires more than just a quick explanation. The Players Association and MLB are currently doing some early bargaining over economic issues, more than two years prior to the expiration of the current CBA, so the MLBPA getting a look at what is working and what isn’t with regard to their strategies and strategists comes with that territory. The MLBPA has a new lead negotiator, Bruce Meyer, and Shapiro was around and working on the previous two CBAs from 2012 and 2016, both of which have been derided — by myself and others in media, and some vocal players, too. Combine the unhappiness with those CBAs with the introduction of Meyer, and this bit from the report at The Athletic…
Continue reading “The MLBPA’s recent firing shouldn’t be controversial, and yet”
Trying to win is for losers
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Here’s how a $15 minimum wage would impact minor-league pay
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $15. Leaving aside that the bill in question wouldn’t actually raise the minimum to $15 until 2025, or that this won’t pass the Senate and become the law of the land, it’s worth exploring how this kind of change would impact baseball in the United States.
While a higher minimum wage wouldn’t impact MLB players, given the league minimum is $550,000 right now, it would change the salaries of minor-league players as well as those in independent ball. It might even succeed in killing indie baseball, but as I’ve written about before, that’s not the worst outcome, at least when we’re talking about the current format of independent ball. Give me municipal baseball teams and give them to me now, thanks.
A jump to a $15 minimum wage would be massive for MLB’s minor-league players, who currently, at the lowest levels, pull in $1,160 per month, and only for the months of the regular season. Despite working about 70 hours per week, none of them are receiving overtime, and won’t, either, thanks to MLB’s years of lobbying Congress to make sure that didn’t happen, which resulted in minor-league players being singled out in last spring’s $1.3 trillion spending bill. They have to get offseason jobs, split roach-infested, filthy, broken apartments with five other teammates, eat mac and cheese and ramen and Dollar Menu meals all the time because of the low pay and road-only $25 per diem, purchase their own equipment… you see what I’m saying. More than doubling the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 would be huge for these sub-poverty-level workers.
Continue reading “Here’s how a $15 minimum wage would impact minor-league pay”
Manny Machado pointed out some of MLB’s structural racism
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MLB’s international events, lack of WWE union, and [robot] sports cops
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MLB’s early collective bargaining sessions might just be theater
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one.
If what Evan Drellich has reported at The Athletic is any indication, we should be expecting little to no progress from Major League Baseball and the Players Associations two-years-early collective bargaining sessions. The short of it is that MLB claims they’re still awaiting any meaningful proposal from the MLBPA, while the players’ side doesn’t seem to believe MLB is here to do anything but tell people that they tried to start a dialogue.
From Drellich:
In his opening statement Tuesday in an annual media session before the All-Star Game, Clark listed off the primary talking points for the players: A desire for greater competitiveness amongst teams, improvements to free agency, and so on.
Then Clark quickly suggested that the league will not engage substantively on any of these fronts at this point, because the league doesn’t want to change its economics. A charge, in essence, that the league is willing to listen, but not act meaningfully.
If you’ve ever been involved in collective bargaining or even as part of a union listening to what your bargaining committee is reporting back, then you know this feeling all too well. MLB could very well be presenting a sympathetic face to the media and fans, so that if things come crashing down in the future, they can always point back to this moment and say they tried. If it weren’t for those pesky players, you know?
Continue reading “MLB’s early collective bargaining sessions might just be theater”
The media still isn’t helping
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
The USWNT’s fight for equal pay takes center stage
This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to gain access to the rest of my work and allow me to keep writing posts like this one.
The United States Women’s National Team are your 2019 World Cup champions, just like they were in 2015. This time around, though, there is a discussion going on outside of just how awesome this roster and its players are (incredibly awesome, for the record): it’s beyond time for the women of America’s national team to be paid on par with the men of America’s national team.
It’s not just fans or media who think so, or anything like that: the team itself believes as much, and in fact sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination back in March of this year:
Continue reading “The USWNT’s fight for equal pay takes center stage”
A look at the NHL and NBA offseasons (and what we can learn about MLB’s from them)
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin