Most players make less than $14,700 per year
July 18, 2022 8:31 AM   Subscribe

 
As part of the settlement, MLB will issue a memo that allows teams to pay minor league players during spring training, and extended spring training and instructional leagues in Florida and Arizona. Teams previously had been blocked from doing so.
(Emphasis added.)

Public pressure will have to be maintained. Otherwise, some teams that are "allowed" to pay for this work simply will not so do. Consider for instance, the new housing guidelines that went into effect this year. The White Sox are operating at a lower standard than nearly every other club, forcing players as high as AA ball (who are mostly 20-27) into sharing bedrooms in multi-bedroom apartments rather than having their own place or at least their own room. Even married players getting exceptions to get their own room aren't getting much better. They're finding they and their spouse get one bedroom out of five in a crowded living space.

Still, it's forward progress. It boggles the mind why teams obsessively looking for a competitive advantage don't embrace the possible benefits of not having 90% of their minor leaguers scrambling to afford to eat. Giving literally every single player from a team's 180 player minor league limit a $20,000 per year raise would cost $3.6MM per organization... about the cost of a backup infielder.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:39 AM on July 18, 2022 [19 favorites]


It boggles the mind why teams obsessively looking for a competitive advantage don't embrace the possible benefits of not having 90% of their minor leaguers scrambling to afford to eat.

Baseball is, even amongst major sporting endeavors, small-c conservative. They won't change shit unless they're absolutely certain it will work, and the minor leagues are set up so that they cannot ever possibly 100% "work" -- even if you just look at AAA, barely half of the players on the roster will ever provide any benefit whatsoever to the major league team that sponsors them.
posted by Etrigan at 9:06 AM on July 18, 2022 [3 favorites]


And this after MLB simply zapped 42 minor league teams out of existence in December 2020.

Truly, the league giveth and the league taketh away.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:32 AM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


@etrigan:
barely half of the players on the roster will ever provide any benefit whatsoever to the major league team that sponsors them.

The value they provide is to have enough players to be able to play the games for the people who do make it, right?

I am glad that the minor leagues were contracted and MLB took over the running of the minors completely. If anything, this is hopefully a start to the next phase where teams like Toronto will force the rest of the league to become better at providing the minimum for the minor leaguers, in terms of development and housing and food and accommodation and the rest.

Previously MLB could rightfully wash their hands off the awful conditions in the minors. Now they cannot, hence the settlement. I don't think the lawsuit could even have been filed in the previous environment, where minors were independent operators affiliated with MLB.
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:34 AM on July 18, 2022 [9 favorites]




Never underestimate the willingness of owners to be cheap bastards all the way down
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:35 AM on July 18, 2022 [2 favorites]


This is great, but... why is $65,000,000 going to the lawyers? It seems obscene.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:16 PM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


I mean that's well over 4,000 years of the average salary formerly paid to the players. I don't think lawyers should be doing this for free, but god damn.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:19 PM on July 18, 2022


This is great, but... why is $65,000,000 going to the lawyers? It seems obscene.

Because the attorneys were working on contingency: they pay all of the upfront costs, the clients pay nothing if there is no award, and the attorneys' fees are capped at (typically*) 1/3rd of the award, even if that would not cover the upfront costs, which can be substantial in the case of long or complex negotiations or litigation. In return for taking on that risk, the attorneys' fees are (typically) 1/3rd of the award, which can be very large and even exceed the actual effort expended on any particular case, but averaged out over the (potentially many) cases that the firm takes on but which do not result in a large award (or any award at all).

*The specific rule or limit varies by state (e.g. some states have progressive limits that decrease as the total award goes up).

Whether 1/3rd is actually reasonable is another matter, but the general feeling is that such windfalls are worth it for the existence of no-upfront-cost legal representation.
posted by jedicus at 12:46 PM on July 18, 2022 [10 favorites]


After nearly a decade of fighting this case, I'm not sure that even represents a super crazy windfall for the lawyers. I'm not saying, like, boo hoo, the poor class action lawyers (or, the poor class action financing investors) took a loss, but I imagine that if the class members were paying typical hourly rates for the time they spent on this case, the cost of this case would be way up in the millions anyway.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:00 PM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


For reference, this is about 4 percent of the 2022 total major league payroll. A perfect example of a winner take all market.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:04 PM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


So its worth noting that while the dorm room accommodations are a throwback to an earlier era and minor leaguers are presumed to have jobs in the office season. Some teams are making strides with furnished corporate housing or even facilities that offer onsite food, gym, etc.

What's not talked about is the racism aspect of this. Many minor leaguers don't have local support systems and frankly aren't able to land relatively high paying jobs such as personal coaches to rich kids or other work to offset the low wages of the minors. Most don't speak English and are new to America. I do not even know if they can legally work other jobs. Most don't want to complain and the baseball system takes full advantage of that.

The best number I can come up with is that an organization has 290 minor league players. At 30 teams that's 8,700 players. At $100k a year that'd be $870million. In just revenues alone the MLB makes $11billion. So that's not insignificant. Minor leagues are built under the assumption you have boys doing it for fun basically and returning to the farm after the season is over, which obviously isn't the case.

I know plenty of people who play football or baseball in serious amateur leagues and I think that's the viable model the MLB needs to take. In fact it seems to be the model they want to take but also want to treat and train them like professional athletes. So while it is easy to say MLB can afford more they're really an expansive organization with 8700 players plus associated personnel that aren't revenue generating. I know of no other business that has that.

Trust me I have no sympathy for the MLB and they're taking advantage of immigrants and also running under 19th century methods of work. I question if such an extensive farm system is even needed.
posted by geoff. at 1:44 AM on July 19, 2022


The best number I can come up with is that an organization has 290 minor league players.

Currently, they're limited to 180 minor leaguers per organization.

It breaks down like this:
  • Triple-A 28 players
  • Double-A 28 players
  • High-A 30 players
  • Single-A 30 players
  • US-based Rookie League no limit
  • International Rookie 35 players
In addition to these buckets into which a player can be sorted, there is also the "Development List" which is, I believe, a recent addition. That's basically a place where players can be temporarily stashed as inactive while they remain with their club and work on something. The Cubs recently put minor leaguer Kohl Franklin (Or maybe it was Ryan Jensen? doesn't matter for this conversation, I guess) on the Development List not long ago to experiment with a new arm angle for his pitching delivery. He stayed with his current club and practiced/learned, but was not available to use in games.

In addition to providing that room for pulling a guy aside to work on something, it also gives some flexibility in assignments. If you have a player who is not doing well, but there isn't currently room to demote him, you can put him on the Development List until either a) he shows improvement in practice or b) there is room at the lower level to take him in.

(Until the minor league contraction in 2021, clubs sometimes had three levels of A ball, and sometimes even an additional level of rookie ball which was "full season." It was all standardized then.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:39 AM on July 19, 2022


The "baseball rationale" for the extensive system of minor leagues is that baseball skills are developed through years of repetition and exposure to ever-higher levels of competition. This is true in other sports but I think it is even more true in baseball where raw athleticism is not necessarily always rewarded. It's why, typically, you can't just throw a player out of high school or college into the major leagues and expect him to succeed. Players like Mike Trout are the exception to the rule.

Now, some of this changing and I think MLB potentially has a path to radically shrink the minor league systems over the next 10-15 years even more than they have already done. Youth amateur leagues are becoming increasingly competitive and all-consuming, MLB teams seem to be drafting more out of the college level (vs high school) than they used to, and so anecdotally I think more players are spending less time in the minor leagues than before. This is not all to the good -- there's concern about the reported rise in Tommy John surgery at the youth level, for example.

International amateur recruiting and development is a whole other mess and would also need to be seriously rethought.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:43 AM on July 19, 2022


I don't think there's much chance of the leagues trying to contract the minor leagues again... not right now anyway. There's an issue they're having right now where the difference in pitching between rookie league and Single A is much more substantial than it was in the past when there was a) a full season rookie league as a transition between the two and/or b) a mid-level A ball to absorb the better hitters. I don't think they'll ever go back to where they were because I just don't see the owners ceding ground like that. But I also don't think they're going to get much support for further contracting and exacerbating an ongoing problem.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:47 AM on July 19, 2022


I neglected to clarify above that players on the Development List count against the 180 player overall limit, but not the active roster limit of their host club.

As such, if, say the Tennessee Smokies (the AA Cubs) decided that DJ Herz needed a week or two to work on his release point, he could be removed from the Smokies' 28 player active roster and replaced while he spent time on the Development List. He'd still count against the 180 player overall limit. During this time, he'd be free to wear the Smokies uniform and participate in all their practices and drills, as well as work with their coaching staff. He just couldn't play in games.

When he was ready to rejoin the Smokies (or be sent to any other team) he would resume counting against their active roster and a corresponding move might be necessary to get them under their individual team limit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:51 AM on July 19, 2022


The article briefly mentions it here, but much of this could be avoided by removing the MLB's antitrust exemption. I'm not a Bernie supporter but even broken clocks....
posted by pwnguin at 10:50 AM on July 19, 2022


It boggles the mind why teams obsessively looking for a competitive advantage don't embrace the possible benefits of not having 90% of their minor leaguers scrambling to afford to eat.

As a White Sox fan, I'm not so sure the team is looking for a competitive advantage, obsessively or otherwise. *Coughs in Tony La Russa's direction*
posted by misskaz at 10:50 AM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


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