Here’s how a $15 minimum wage would impact minor-league pay

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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.

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Reader mailbag: A’s in Oakland, Eaton’s and Vargas’ non-apologies

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The Mariners’ owner is all about flexibility and my eyes hurt from all the rolling

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Adam Eaton has deluded himself into thinking suffering is good, actually

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The Washington City Paper ran a story on Sunday discussing the poor working and living conditions of low-level minor-league players in the Nationals’ system. For the most part, it’s full of the kind of information you’re already aware of if you’ve been opening up newsletters like this one, but then it gets to current Nats’ outfielder Adam Eaton, and what he has to say about minor-league exploitation. In short, it’s a net good! Who knew?

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If the Padres keep Chris Paddack down, is it service time manipulation?

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Here’s a fun thought exercise for your Monday morning.

The Padres sent rookie starter Chris Paddack down to the minors last week, which was always going to happen regardless of how good he was in the majors. The reason is innings limits: Paddack’s career-high is 90 frames, achieved last summer, and that was after not pitching in 2017 due to undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Now, it’s expected that the Padres will bring Paddack back up shortly, and that this is just a way to get him off of the big-league roster for a spell in order to bring in an arm they can use in his absence. Paddack won’t pitch in the minors, or, if he does, not like he has in the majors, where he’s already logged just under 66 innings of work over 12 starts. As long as Paddack returns to the bigs within 10 days of his demotion, there will be no interruption of his service time, which would avoid any service time manipulation problems. However, it’s worth asking if it would actually be service time manipulation if the Padres kept Paddack in the minors long enough to hit pause on his service time clock.

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The media isn’t helping

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For some reason, The Ringer published a podcast featuring special guest Ben Shapiro on Thursday. Yes, that Ben Shapiro, the only Ben Shapiro, the one adored by the right wing and mass murderers, as Deadspin reminds. Shapiro was a guest on Larry Wilmore’s podcast, because Larry Wilmore was at one time a guest on Shapiro’s podcast, and I guess we learned nothing from like, Jon Stewart going on Tucker Carlson’s show and how little damage trying to clown on him and his bow tie while having a discussion with him did to his stances and career.

How’d it go? Well, let’s take this bit from Deadspin’s piece, and you’ll understand in a hurry (you should also read that piece in full for the full context, if you’re unaware of who this goblin is):

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Sports betting is a labor issue, especially in MiLB

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MLB teams are more likely to Mets than use exciting loopholes in the draft

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Scott Boras hates the MLB Draft, too

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Draft pick compensation has got to go, again

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