Category: Labor

On MiLB’s new, bargained housing policy

A lack of player input into the housing policy helped spur on minor-league unionization, so it should be no surprise that the end result of a bargained housing policy is looking good.

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Thanks to reporting by Evan Drellich at The Athletic, we now have more details on just what the improvements to the housing plan for minor leaguers is, courtesy of their now-ratified collective bargaining agreement. Some notes we’ve seen before, but they were more vague at the time — like the idea that all but the most well-paid minor-league players would have their housing paid for, for instance. What was that threshold, what percentage of minor leaguers would be considered “well-paid,” etc., those details were lacking when news was first announced.

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Notes: Minor League CBA, ratification, the future of MLB labor

Notes on the MiLB CBA ratification, as well as some work from me from around the internet.

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Last Wednesday evening, it was reported that Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association — the representatives of the unionized minor-league baseball players — had come to a preliminary agreement for the first-ever collective bargaining agreement for MiLB. All that was needed was for the rest of the players and for MLB’s owners to vote on the agreed-upon deal in order to ratify it. We’re still waiting as of Monday morning for the owners to share their voted-upon feelings on the matter, but the players came through with 99 percent in favor, per a report from The Athletic’s Evan Drellich.

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The first MiLB CBA could be ratified by Friday

If the players and MLB’s owners agree that this is the deal, the first-ever MiLB CBA will be ratified before their Opening Day.

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By midnight entering Friday, the first-ever Minor League Baseball collective bargaining agreement could be ratified. It’s already been initially agreed to by the negotiating parties: now, the larger minor-league player base and MLB’s owners have to vote and agree to what’s been bargained. It’s a historic moment, and one that might take a little time to see some of the effects of —both because these things don’t come to light all at once and because there are some larger, structural changes that are going to take time to see the full effects of — though there are also immediate changes that are far more obvious.

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Mailbag: Kids with jobs

Celebrating kids celebrating a high school graduation is good, yes, but consider why it’s a notable story, too.

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Mailbag time! This one on international signings and how weird MLB’s behavior with literal children gets to be. If you have a mailbag question you’d like to see answered, either respond to this newsletter email, or hit me up on @Marc_Normandin on Twitter.

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There’s work to do to fix arbitration

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A few weeks back, I wrote about how arbitration shouldn’t go anywhere, despite MLB’s attempts to get rid of the system they’ve hated since its inception in the days of Marvin Miller. Hell, the fact MLB wants to get rid of arbitration remains the best proof that the system is worth salvaging. Arbitration certainly isn’t a perfect tool these days, though, as teams figure out how to manipulate hearings in a way that earns them victories. While things on the position player and starting pitcher side are a little more evenly split in terms of which side, teams or player, wins out, as Malachi Hayes wrote for Baseball Prospectus, relievers are doomed.

Read the entire feature, but here’s a snippet of the findings:

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MLB hasn’t given up on restricting minor-league pay yet

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If you needed a reminder that Major League Baseball is disingenuous in their public desire to make life better for minor-league players, you only have to check the news to find it. They might have chosen to voluntarily recognize that the players had unionized and sought representation under the Players Association, and they have certainly spoken on how they gave the players raises across the board and are now paying for their housing, look at us, aren’t we just the greatest? But that’s just the surface level stuff: underneath, they’re the same old MLB.

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MLB is trying to shrink the minors again

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We hadn’t heard a peep about the nature of the minor-league collective bargaining between Major League Baseball and the Players Association despite it going on for months now, but we finally got a tiny morsel to reflect on. Tony Clark spoke on various matters around the league, which Evan Drellich published at The Athletic, and it’s all worth looking at. The newest info in there, though, pertains to the ongoing bargaining, and an ask MLB is making that the union isn’t about to budge on:

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Thoughts on MLB’s economic reform committee

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Whispers turned to anonymous leaks, which became Dick Monfort and Rob Manfred publicly complaining/shaming, and then an “economic reform committee” was unveiled by MLB. All of this was predictable, and because of that, it’s not too difficulty to suss out what it all means.

MLB is using the recent issues of Diamond Sports Group — which runs the Bally regional sports networks that Sinclair purchased from FOX after Disney grabbed everything besides those RSNs and the fascist cable news network portion of the company in their quest to own every IP in existence — as an excuse for the existence of this economic reform committee, and I’m sure that’s true to a degree: the owners will all be in some uncharted waters soon, and rather than end up in a situation like Bud Selig arguing with George Steinbrenner about revenue-sharing for years, or any number of 1980s commissioners trying to explain how cable was good for the owners’ bank accounts, actually, Manfred and Co. are trying to get ahead of the discussions about this brave new world.

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Arbitration shouldn’t go anywhere

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The greatest evidence that exists in favor of arbitration is that Major League Baseball wants to do away with it. It’s not a perfect system, no, given the arbitrators themselves are inconsistent, and MLB spends an awful lot of time coaching up its teams on specific talking points so that they can defend their positions, but in aggregate, there is a reason that the Players Association is in favor of keeping an arbitration system in place, while the league would love very much to be done with it.

Even in an offseason like this one, where the players were trounced in arbitration itself, the system still allows for teams to negotiate with players — for players to ask for more than they could without the threat of an arbitration hearing in place — and end up with a higher salary than they would have with no such event looming in the distance. As I wrote back in 2019 for Deadspin:

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The A’s have been busy, but only relatively speaking

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The A’s keep on making moves this offseason, with the latest of them a trade of reliever-turning-starter A.J. Puk to the Marlins for sophomore outfielder JJ Bleday. It’s something of a challenge trade, since Puk converted to the bullpen in the minors and hasn’t made a start in the bigs, while Bleday’s rookie season didn’t approach his Triple-A production, but the thing I mostly want to note is that the A’s have been busy, but they haven’t exactly been putting in full effort. Again.

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