Category: MiLB

It’s time to pay MiLB players more, and more often

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While the clash between Major League Baseball and the Players Association is front-and-center at the moment thanks to the ongoing collective bargaining and the imminent expiration of the current CBA, we shouldn’t forget that minor-league baseball players have their own share of troubles and problems to solve. Advocates for Minor Leaguers pointed out on Tuesday evening an issue that those players are struggling through right now: the fact that players are not paid year-round, even though their contracts stipulate that they must work with their baseball careers in mind year-round.

Advocates’ tweet included two screenshots from the uniform player contract to make their point, the text of which read:

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Steve Cohen really should have logged off

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Major League Baseball might be taking steps to improve the living and working conditions of present-day minor-league baseball players, but what about those that were already ground into a fine powder by those horrors? Consider, for a moment, that after essentially doubling minor leaguers salaries, making it so they were no longer responsible for paying the clubhouse attendant’s wages via tips, providing for at least some of the players’ food, and recently promising to pay for the housing of “certain” minor leaguers, Minor League Baseball is still nowhere near the situation they should be: housing covered for all players, a living wage, equipment paid for by the clubs instead of the players, and so on. Now, consider that the minor-league players who were around for years before all of MLB’s recent upgrades didn’t even have access to that much.

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On concerns about MLB’s minor-league housing mandate

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MLB is going to mandate that teams provide housing for “certain” minor leaguers, news that was broken on Sunday by ESPN’s Jeff Passan and that we’ve already discussed in this space. However, as was pointed out on Monday, that’s about all we know: that piece mostly focused on the need for housing assistance and why, exactly, MLB has decided to reverse course on the issue now (the short version: they’re trying to appease players who are moving ever-closing to unionizing.) What we’ll focus on this time around, instead, is what the housing assistance should look like. It’s good to get these thoughts in order before the actual shape of things is revealed, so you already know what to look out for and be preemptively mad about.

Back in June, Beyond the Box Score’s Sheryl Ring brought up some legitimate concerns about MLB providing housing for minor-league players, having to do with landlord-tenant relationships, corporate housing, and more:

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MLB will mandate housing assistance for MiLB players in 2022

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Details remain essentially nonexistent, but we at least know this: all 30 of MLB’s teams will be mandated to provide housing for minor-league players starting with the 2022 season. No longer will it be select clubs deciding to pay out stipends or cover the full costs of housing, while others like the Cardinals and A’s plug their ears and wait for the season to end so they can stop being bothered about the horrific living conditions their players are dealing with.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news on Sunday night, and again, said news is vague. We don’t yet know if teams will be providing stipends to their players, as the San Francisco Giants have been doing for (some of) their minor-league players. We don’t know if furnished apartments are going to be provided, as has happened for Astros’ minor leaguers in 2021. We also don’t know which minor-league players are going to be provided with this assistance: all Passan was able to report at this time is that “certain” minor-league players would be provided housing.

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Maybe things are changing in the MiLB labor landscape

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It feels like we’re close to something in the Minor League Baseball labor movement, no? Maybe that’s just my optimism for a better future for those players talking, but there is a reason I’m as optimistic about it as I’ve been of late. That’s not to say I think it’s inevitable, but where in the past I’ve thought, “yes, it’s technically possible for organization and unionization in MiLB,” it’s starting to feel like it’s a thing that could actually happen at some point.

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Please don’t try to rehabilitate Jeff Luhnow

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Listen, I understand what the New York Post’s Joel Sherman was going for in a recent piece on the Astros, I really do. He tried to couch it all, and repeatedly, in language that protected him from saying the sign-stealing the Astros performed in 2017 was acceptable. His goal was instead to point out that what Jeff Luhnow built was more than a team that stole signs through an elaborate ploy involving technology en route to a World Series championship. And that’s true! Jeff Luhnow, as general manager of the Astros, did help build a team that continues to be competitive to this day, even two years removed from his direct influence at the top of baseball operations.

Here’s Sherman on Luhnow:

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The Phillies reportedly reprimanded minor leaguers for wearing solidarity wristbands

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“The Phillies should know they’re being watched.” This is what the executive director of Advocates for Minor Leaguers, Henry Marino, told USA Today earlier this week, in response to the Phillies reportedly reprimanding minor-league players for wearing solidarity wristbands during the final game of the regular season.

The wrist bands, which are available to the public in exchange for a $10 donation to Advocates for Minor Leaguers, were used by the players to raise awareness of the terrible working and living conditions that minor-league players toil under. The Phillies did not appreciate the players standing up for themselves, nor bringing attention to their plight, and so, the players were reprimanded, according to the players themselves, who alerted Advocates about the situation.

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On MLB teams refusing to assist with minor-league housing

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It’s pretty clear at this point in the Minor League Baseball season that a number of MLB teams simply do not care that there are minor leaguers losing money, or sleeping in the clubhouse, or in cars. It’s nearly September — the season will go on a little longer than usual, instead of it ending in a few days, due to the coronavirus-related delay at the start of the year — and these teams have done nothing to ease these burdens, even though they could. Given the date on the calendar, it’s fair to assume that these teams are just hoping the problem goes away when the 2021 season does, so they’ve got their fingers in their ears and are pretending they can’t hear a thing.

They could provide retroactive back pay and housing stipends for players, as the Washington Nationals did for their minor-league players one week ago, as the San Francisco Giants did before then. Advocates for Minor Leaguers have been pushing for year-round pay throughout the season, for teams to pay players for time spent in extended spring training, for stipends to help pay for housing, and for more significant meal coverage. Some teams, like the Nats and Giants, have conceded that these are necessary measures, and deployed them. Others, like the Oakland A’s, have said nothing, except for when they had a chance to pretend that actually, the meals problem had already been fixed. (It had not.)

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On one way to challenge the legitimacy of the MLB Draft

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On Wednesday, Baseball Prospectus published my latest feature, “The MLB Draft is an Unnecessary Relic of the Past.” The events surrounding Mets’ first-round pick Kumar Rocker made it topical, sure, but did not force the arguments made within to exist: those arguments are longstanding, recent (and recent-ish) goings on more like further ammunition for said arguments than anything. As was written in this space a couple of years ago now, drafts are indefensible, unless you’re a team owner.

A subscription is required to read the whole Prospectus feature, so just in case you need the background on where I’m about to go with this, it’s about how if the draft once had a legitimizing purpose that helped the game, and not just line owner’s pockets, it no longer does: thanks to revenue-sharing, lucrative television contracts even for teams you wouldn’t want if you didn’t have to, and a streamlined and shrunken minor-league system, there is no real reason why, say, the Pirates can’t go toe-to-toe with a financial juggernaut like the Yankees when it comes to acquiring amateur talent on an open market.

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A’s minor leaguers can’t afford to play home games

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Back in June, I wrote about how Cardinals’ minor leaguers were struggling to pay for their hotels during home games — that they were spending more than they were making on homestands, even while staying at a discounted hotel. It certainly was not a situation unique to those Cardinals’ farmhands, just given the math involved in paying for a hotel for home games while making a salary well below the poverty line, but St. Louis’ minor leaguers were one of the first to speak out anonymously and with a team-level identifier attached.

Now, some Oakland A’s minor leaguers are saying the same thing is happening to them. Alex Schultz at the SFGATE wrote about how A’s minor leaguers playing for Single-A Stockton can’t afford to pay for a hotel during home games, even though the A’s got a bulk discount at one. The situation is the same as it was for the Cardinals’ players highlighted in June: thanks to coronavirus protocols during the pandemic, not being able to stay with host families, or stuff six of themselves into a three-bedroom apartment to rent at a severe discount, is sucking up what little pay the players usually manage to take home.

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