Minor Leaguers To Be Paid More, Not Enough
Last Friday, Jake Seiner and Ben Walker of the Associated Press reported that Major League Baseball has opted to raise minor league player pay to, at minimum, $4,800 dollars a year. As usual, the change was announced unilaterally: minor league players are not unionized and cannot help but accept this compensation. Specifically, MLB decided to set minimum pay levels (not including spring training, which is unpaid, and not starting until the 2021 season) at:
- $400/week ($4,800 for a three-month season) for Rookie or short-season (up from $290/$3,480)
- $500/week ($10,000 for a five-month season) for Class A (up from $290/$5,800)
- $600/week ($12,000 for a five-month season) for Double-A (up from $350/$7,000)
- $700/week ($14,000 for a five-month season) for Triple-A (up from $502/$10,040)
Assuming that players work an eight-hour workday five days a week (which is an assumption you’d make only if you both knew nothing about how long minor leaguers work and also were feeling extremely generous towards the league), the new pay scale works out to an hourly minimum wage of $10, $12.50, $15, and $17.50, respectively. Assuming even 50 hours a week puts everybody below $15 an hour; 60 hours a week puts everyone below $12. And all of the scenarios assume either that players are independently wealthy or that they’ll fit their year-round conditioning and training in around finding some other way to make money seven or nine months out of the year.
Minor League Baseball, for its part, said that it “fully supports MLB’s decision to raise the pay rates for players in affiliated Minor League Baseball,” but added it “believes MLB can afford these salary increases without reducing the number of players by 25 percent … we have provided MLB with a specific proposal on how we can work together to ensure improvements to older facilities and reduce travel between series through limited realignment. We look forward to continued good faith negotiations with our colleagues at MLB and our principal goal remains to preserve Minor League Baseball in as many communities as possible.”
The league has justified this level of pay — for players who are, at minimum, among the 5,000 or so best in the world at what they do — by advancing the argument that playing minor league baseball is “not a career but a short-term seasonal apprenticeship” akin to that pursued by “artists, musicians, and other creative professionals” who are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act.
This argument, while about as convincing as Uber’s case that the drivers who steer cars hailed on their app are independent contractors rather than employees who deserve fair wages and a stake in the company’s success, at least has the advantage of being mostly logically consistent with MLB’s ongoing effort to contract 42 existing minor league teams (covered by Craig here, here, and here, and which conveniently would entirely cover the cost of this week’s pay raise). Boiled down to essentials, the league’s incentives — underlying both this improved but inadequate pay raise and minor-league contraction — come down to this:
Major league baseball teams usually have a few players under contract who they expect will eventually play in the major leagues, but they aren’t quite ready to do so yet. Those players, most of whom were talented enough coming out of the draft to earn multi-million dollar signing bonuses, need a place to prepare for the majors. Playing simulated games gets boring after a while, so it’s helpful to have the future stars play against real live humans. Those players, in turn, should be savvy enough to understand that they’re not really meant to be doing this long-term. They’re welcome to hang out and hit a few balls around so the elite prospects have someone to play with, of course, but they shouldn’t expect much in the way of compensation.
Viewed in this light, the minor leagues and the players and coaches who work in them don’t have any value in their own right. They have value only in terms of their relationship to major league teams, who in turn see them primarily as an expensive job training program for elite new hires. In this light, contracting 42 minor league teams makes perfect sense. At least that number of minor-league players won’t ever make the major leagues. It’d be cheaper and more efficient to place the few prospects who do have a chance of making it onto a smaller number of teams. As for the players on teams who won’t have a place in the new system? Well, they should really have been doing something else anyway.
Given the incentives it’s facing, I understand why MLB is proposing minor league contraction. I also understand why they’re trying to keep minor league pay as low as possible. I just think that those are terrible things to do. Anyone who’s ever been to a game knows that minor league baseball has value in its own right, as more than just an ancillary to major league baseball. Even if it didn’t, it’s insulting to our collective intelligence to suggest that anyone on a minor league roster isn’t in the business of being a professional athlete full-time (even if, under the current wage system they have to, say, drive an Uber on the side to make ends meet). Given that reality, it stands to reason that the league ought to pay its players like the full-time employees that they are. That $4,800 just isn’t going to cut it.
There is an instinct, when assessing a major sports league’s actions, to put them against the framework proposed by the league itself: that the league is a business, and that businesses try to keep costs down and revenues up. Any move that is intelligible within that particular framework is deemed acceptable, too. I reject that logic. The league is a business, yes, but a business that has been acknowledged by law (and by common sense long before that) as holding such a special place in our cultural landscape that it deserves an exemption from federal anti-trust law. Surely an institution granted such extraordinary legal standing ought to be held to a higher and better standard. Last year, I wrote that:
We as fans of the game have the means, through our voices and our wallets, to express our opinions on the balance of power in major league baseball, and I can think of no particular reason we should want to shore up the position of owners as a class having considered that balance. Major league baseball — as opposed to baseball as an amateur game we play only for ourselves, or our friends — exists because of the cultural meaning we fans assign to it, and the money and attention we pay to effectuate that meaning. That makes us shared stakeholders in its future, perhaps not as entitled to a voice in its direction as the players who play it and the league that facilitates it, but entitled enough to an opinion nonetheless. What we say matters, and how we choose to react to the choices teams have made this offseason can and should affect the way the game moves forward.
We have a part to play in determining the way we want the world we live in to look. Anyone who’s ever had a friend make bad choices on the basis of wholly intelligible motives will understand that our obligation to that friend is to tell them that what they’re doing is wrong, that they can do better, and that we’ll help them do it. I love baseball and I want to see it be a better and more responsible part of American life. I’m glad minor league players will be paid more next season. And I think they could stand to be paid even more still.
Rian Watt is a contributor to FanGraphs based in Seattle. His work has appeared at Vice, Baseball Prospectus, The Athletic, FiveThirtyEight, and some other places too. By day, he works with communities around the world to end homelessness.
40% raise is nothing to sneeze at.
Gesundheit.
The whole point of this article was to make the case that it is something to sneeze at.
I understand why this comment is getting negative reviews. It adds very little if anything to the discussion. I do wonder if, paradoxically, a massive percentage raise would possibly create a PR fiasco itself. If MLB bumps pay 100-200 percent, which perhaps would be a more appropriate result, the response would be “if you could raise pay so much so easily, why were you paying these paltry figures in the first place?”
If you are being an optimist, you could hope that this will not be the end of this readjustment and shortly these players will be earning a decent living wage. It seems as though MLB has responded to public criticism, so no reason for that criticism to stop when the response clearly did not go far enough.
If you are being an optimist…
Why would you? Do you really think the 32 owners picked Rob Manfred because he is is a nice guy who is trying to do what is best for fans and the game? What I think is more likely is that the owners pay Manfred $milions to forward their own interests in the most palatable way. In this case that means Manfred is out there to make us think “We gave them a 40% bump… what more could you possibly ask of us?” This sounds nice until you remember that this is a billion dollar industry that could easily double this salaries after this raise, for every single minor leaguer, without cutting teams, and see a change of only a few basis points on their bottom lines.
Why do you think MLB did this? Do you think it was in response to public pressure? Do you think maybe they anticipated continued public pressure and perhaps the idea all along was that they would eventually raise salaries higher? Is that at least possible? Considering the substantial negative feedback this has received, if the idea was to offer this token and only this, I’d have to wonder “why even bother?”
Yes. It was clearly in response to public pressure which has been building. If there is more public pressure they will do it again. But it was designed to satisfy enough of the public so they could move on. It’s not anything generous on their part. It’s simply a reaction to try and keep people happy and they’ll the minimum to maintain that.
40% of nothing is something to sneeze at.
Thank you for lending your voice in support of those without one.
This is a bit much.
They aren’t locked away and gagged. They aren’t refugees without a media outlet or unborn children. These are people working a job they chose, usually with decent signing bonuses, who can leave whenever they want. Let’s not make this into the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Most of them don’t get those decent signing bonuses, because most of them weren’t high draft picks.
The players you’re talking about really aren’t worth very much to the teams. Most of them are “fillers” to fill out a team. It’s not a particularly valuable skillset. It’s probably not the best career path to play in Minor League Baseball if your odds of making it to the Majors is that low.
I can’t blame them if it’s their dream to try, but they’re extremely replaceable, and countless young men are waiting to take their positions. It’s all about the choices we make, and we need to grant people the respect of letting them make their own decisions.
You’re actually providing the best argument in favor of reducing the number of MiLB teams, even if you don’t know it. The talent pool needs to be consolidated if we want to impose greater-than-market-value salaries. Unfortunately that would suck for the players who wish to take the low pay to play baseball and it would suck for the fans.
This is the key part:
“And all of the scenarios assume either that players are independently wealthy or that they’ll fit their year-round conditioning and training in around finding some other way to make money seven or nine months out of the year.”
Rian is preaching to the choir a bit here (as am I), but it’s totally disingenuous to assert that players aren’t supposed to be working then, when we know that teams expect them to be constantly working in an apprentice-ship like manner. Teams expect their guys to be working sometimes as much as 70 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, and should be paid like it, even if it is close to minimum wage. Right now, the only one that even comes close to paying someone like a year-round apprentice is at AAA, and that’s under some pretty generous assumptions.
I don’t think anyone thinks minor league players should get rich, but $20K a year is absolutely not too much to ask for. It’s not easy to live on $20K, but at least it’s possible.
The thing is fans and owners think differently on player development. Fans think “if my team pays minor leaguers better and provide better equipments and stuff they will more likely develop and become capable major leaguers and help my team win.”
But that’s not something the owners, as a collective, cares about. To them whether MLB players are slightly better or worse dont matter. Because it’s a closed system as theres no outside competition. If Trout and Cole are 5% better as players due to their superior minor league development, the game will still be the same from the viewer perspective. As long as MLB players are much better than players in Japanese, Cuban, Korean leagues, etc. theres no incentive for the league to improve the players as a collective.
This is why MLB hunts down so hard on teams trying get around loopholes like international spending. Because as long as every team has the same restrictions the league as a whole doesnt suffer while saving money. It’s only if one particular team decide to spend more that make things bad.
That would likely depend on the type of owner, and here corporate owners (in contrast to personal ownership) might actually help. The Jays unilaterally increased MiLB salaries by 50% last year (that MLB-mandate increase is actually still lower than this), and they are owned by the Rogers conglomerate. This means the owner doesn’t have sentiment: the president of baseball operations gets a budget and manages it as he pleases (it also means less flexibility for sudden budget increases in a particular situation). If it provides a better winning strategy, go for it. There is no Arte Moreno-like push for specific players.
Much prefer this article to the Craig Edwards articles which were focused solely on MLB proposed reduction in the number of MiLB teams. MLB, while should be able to adjust the number of MiLB to suit how they want to run their organizations, should get no break on paying players a living wage.
Caveat: I spent 17 years in a AA/AAA town and was annoyed by minor league free agents filling roster spots while better players/prospects were being babied in lower levels.
Also, I know that this has come up here before, but I am baffled not a single team is offering minor leaguers more money to build up their farm system. Think about it: You’re trying to get poor kids from Latin America to sign with your team, and you’re capped in how much you can offer them as a signing bonus. Similarly, guys at the bottom of the draft often barely get any bonuses at all. You double everyone’s salaries in the minor leagues and your and they hypothetically spend one year at each level, and that’s another $40K, which is as much as some of these kids get as bonuses at the lower end of the draft or at the lower end of the IFA scale.
It costs more, yes, about $4M per year more (based on my back of the envelope calculations in my scenario where someone spends one year at each pay level). But when they could, teams would regularly blow past signing bonus limits to get more talent, and this accomplishes the same objective, and they would sometimes even do it for more money than my proposed solution. This strategy is not enough to make up for another team coming in and offering another $100K, but it would be enough to make sure your lower-level targets sign with you and not someone else (or skip college, perhaps).
And this is before we get to the health and performance benefits of having players being able to eat and sleep adequately.
My guess is this doesn’t happen because most of the owners legitimately find it an affront to pay workers higher wages, that they have some belief that the guys who work under them don’t deserve it. But it is surprising that not a single ownership group has greenlighted it. My guess is owners don’t want to have to deal with complaining from the other owners, especially for guys who get traded from one org to another and then have to deal with the lower rate of pay. Let’s say the Yankees decide to double the MiLB pay, and then their guys get traded to the Giants. Then the Steinbrenners get an earful from the Giants’ ownership about how they spoiled their minor leaguers, and getting kicked out of the cool kids club is too much to bear.
Toronto did last year (raising salaries – assuredly knowing that this was coming). There were also rumblings that the Giants would join them.
I presume that there were institutional pressures preventing teams from doing so earlier (which you can interpret as collusion, though I don’t mean anything so formal) and agree that this was a possible area for teams to exploit (I think Bill James may have floated this idea in the late 80s?).
I was under the impression, probably incorrect, that California was making some rumblings about investigating minor league teams and their major league affiliates about violating employment law.
I suspect this is a type of collusion which is entirely legal for MLB to engage in, so they may very well be privately open about it.
Because it would be a short lived competitive advantage. Other teams would follow suit and the end result is every team is now paying higher wages just so a single team could benefit for maybe a single signing cycle.
As a business strategy it would be incredibly short sighted for any team. Whether you want to call it institutional pressures, collusion, or even just a collective understanding, owners aren’t going to jump at the opportunity to permanently raise costs across the board for themselves and everyone else.
The owners are all in this together in a sense as financial decisions by one owner can affect the rest. MLB owners are incredibly selective when vetting and approving buyers, they want a certain type of person who shares their perspective on the status quo.
It’s why we almost saw Steve Cohen (who Luhnowed his way out of criminal charges for insider trading) as an owner but Mark Cuban would have never been approved to buy the Cubs, despite having the money and interest. MLB and the current owners don’t want disruption. They look at a guy like Cuban and see someone who is going to make their lives hell and their pocket books a little bit lighter.
(Cuban isn’t perfect either as the Mavs sexual harassment scandal indicates, but at least he appeared contrite.)
The Ringer did a piece on Cuban and how he has disrupted the NBA status quo to make lives better for his players. It’s worth the read and food for thought when looking at MLB owners.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/1/22/21076049/mark-cuban-dallas-mavericks-luka-doncic
Phil tackles a similar thing below, and this gets at something I was trying to get at earlier: There is likely a lot of pressure to keep owners from unilaterally paying more to minor leaguers, akin to collusion if not exactly the same.
I am not so sure that all teams would immediately follow if one did. There are a couple of lines of thought that probably both aren’t true, even though we intuitively subscribe to both:
1) Owners care more about making money than winning
2) Owners will adapt to other teams paying more for talent by spending more
We can explain this tension by noting that all teams can agree, either through some tacit understanding or through formal discussion, to not pay their people more and to keep wages down. That behavior fits both #1 and #2. But if someone did break it, we don’t know whether #1 or #2 would guide owner behavior.
“My guess is this doesn’t happen because most of the owners legitimately find it an affront to pay workers higher wages, that they have some belief that the guys who work under them don’t deserve it.”
So your guess is the owners are cartoon villains.
An alternative explanation might be that they do not think the benefits would exceed the costs and no one is forced to play professional baseball. If they start losing guys they want then wages will go up, just like any employer.
eh, it’s a monopoly in terms of providing baseball (erm, well, a cartel) AND, through the draft, a monopsony, and both lead to subpar products in the long run. They’re not competing with anyone for baseball talent, really, so they can set the rate on both sides of the market. They’re competing for eyeballs, but those eyeballs aren’t really differentiating based on quality, or at least to the point where it puts a bad product out of business (and when owners have done dumb stuff to the point of threatening teams with bankruptcy, the league moves really fast).
Yeah, the alternative explanation actually winds up in the same cartoon villain space: That they’re using monopsony conditions, which they have created, to depress wages. As long as no one person starts paying higher wages, no one else has to follow, and they all win (Phil tackles this below).
I’m assuming there is intense pressure from owners for everyone to toe the line.
For the richest teams, paying their minor leaguers more makes a lot of sense – if you get a few more prospects who would have gone to college or an IFA who would have signed with another team with the same or slightly higher bonus otherwise, it will be worth it. Of course, for it to have a benefit, people need to believe the team is going to continue paying their minor leaguers above the league rate.
If the Dodgers are prepared to pay about $10 million for the 67th pick in the draft, how much would they pay to have an extra chance that the David Prices, Paul Goldschmidts of the next draft would sign with them instead of going to college – and in years when you are capped with you IFA spending, that a guy would sign with you for your max bonus, and not sign for slightly more with another team?
(And I appreciate owners don’t think like this…) If your aim is to win, and you have a large budget, then increasing your yearly costs by $4 million if it means you get an advantage or the other teams have to follow suit by raising their costs by the same amount (when $4 million is a worth more to them than it is to you) seems like a reasonable strategy. (Again, I know owners care far more about the money, but if you are a GM who just sees money as a resource to help you win, then spending money like this might have some benefits)
I would imagine that a more logical answer is that spending more money at the low ends of the minors has *no* positive effect on the major league product. As much as the mythical single rogue owner who inflates wages in a manner being suggested may not want “to deal with the complaining from the other owners” I would equally imagine that this same owner wouldn’t give near as big a shit when their major league team is successful and going to the playoffs year-in-and-year-out.
Good news out of San Francisco:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/giants/article/Giants-to-go-beyond-MLB-and-raise-minor-league-15064864.php
It looks like it’s about what is being discussed here, but just starting earlier.
The free housing thing is interesting–it’s definitely something that teams could do pretty easily (and some already do, I think). I’d like to see teams, if they’re not increasing salaries beyond this, go way farther than they have and take over the housing and nutrition for players–not just for the season, but year-round.
They’re getting paid in exposure
Just like Reese McGuire’s lawyers
Exposure is a cause of death.
“about as convincing as Uber’s case that the drivers who steer cars hailed on their app are independent contractors rather than employees who deserve fair wages and a stake in the company’s success”
So, pretty convincing then? Or do you know more about labor law than the NLRB? See Uber Technologies, Inc., 46 NLRB AMR 55 (April 16, 2019) (“UberX and UberBLACK drivers, who provide personal transportation services through the employer’s ride-share platform, are independent contractors rather than employees[.]”).
Read and learn:
https://www.epi.org/publication/uber-drivers-are-not-entrepreneurs-nlrb-general-counsel-ignores-the-realities-of-driving-for-uber/
Lots of people who do this for a living think the NLRB got it wrong, and I certainly don’t trust anything this administration does to be on the up and up.
Implying that a publication from the Economic Policy Institute is less tendentious than an advisory memorandum from the NLRB is a tough argument to make. Maybe we can agree that how people view the independent-contractor/employee distinction is colored by their political leanings, but the issue is hardly as cut-and-dried as Mr. Watt’s article suggests. And it’s an unnecessary position for the article to take. You can support higher wages for MiLB players without trying to controvert decades of caselaw and Board precedent regarding drivers in the private transportation industry.
If the argument is that Uber classifying their drivers as contractors is not convincing, then the fact that the government and many people, including Uber drivers themselves, find the “contractor” position reasonable greatly undermines that argument. The fact that other people disagree is interesting but is not a defense of the argument presented.
Uber is a machine that takes VC money and distributes it to its drivers.
Redistributes money to consumers. Consumers benefit the most because it’s basically a heavily subsidized taxi, drivers get hurt a little bit, Investors get crushed.
Someone here explained it as the royal family of Saudi Arabia deciding to subsidize taxis in the United States, which is almost as interesting as their decision to just give Adam Neumann to deposit in his personal bank account.
erm, yes, they basically gave Softbank 50 billion dollars to subsidize mid level white collar urban life in the united states
pretty sure in California that it’s black letter law now that Uber and Amazon workers are employees, not contractors. Even if it weren’t, Amazon’s delivery trucks keep killing people, so they’re going to force state governments to deal with that relationship one way or another.
That’s the point: California had to pass a law expressly stating that these sorts of workers are “employees” because the argument that — under prior law — they were “independent contractors” is quite convincing.
right. IANAL, especially not labor, but black letter law exists now that they aren’t contractors. In addition, there are cases working their way through that are likely to reverse these precedents-
I expect States Attorneys General and legislatures to really go after the delivery drivers in the next couple of years, because if you abuse something enough (the contractor system), it will get taken away from you. No one is happy that Joey SuspendedLicense McConvictedRapist is mowing down toddlers in a labelled box truck but Amazon can’t get sued, except Amazon
NLRB isn’t what is used to be. Gutted by cronyism and patronage (and a party hostile to its existence).
Good article
Years ago I knew another lawyer (I think he’s well retired by now) who always made sure that even when he was “giving” something, the other side knew it was a tradeoff for something else-usually something he hadn’t even raised in negotiations. Then, if the issue arose a second time, he’s say “don’t you remember we discussed this in connection with my client’s concession on ____”
It was a real skill, but left some people feeling burned. This “gesture” by MLB is likely 95% self-interest. They want the window dressing, the linkage between higher salaries and contraction, and when some teams are lopped off, and jobs are lost, we will hear again “don’t you remember we discussed this when we raised salaries….”
I’m glad players are getting more, but there’s going to be a price.
anybody who gives away leverage before things start getting written down is (or stipulating, immediately that this is a good faith gesture)…. not doing negotiations right, and the counterparty, if they’re good, will just ignore it.
I don’t believe the anti-trust exemption includes exemption from minimum wage laws. Let MLB and MiLB conduct an experiment and have the players punch a time clock for a year. Then let’s see what their hourly pay really is.
I’d bet money they make them wear trackers in the “off season,” use that data.
Even slow progress is progress. If the MLBPA isn’t going to represent them, the Minor League players really need to look into forming their own union.
Form a union with what leverage?
As mentioned in the article, minor league ballplayers are divided into players who got really nice signing bonuses and bright futures, and the other guys who fill up rosters and hope they win the lottery and have a real major league career. The former have little incentive to risk their signing bonuses by refusing to play, especially since they can see major league contracts and, by extension, set for life money out in the distance. The latter group is disposable, given that there are lots of fringe players who are currently willing to play minor league baseball for little money. If this fringe does not want to play, there’s more where that came from. This is not exactly the same set of circumstances that brought forth your pipefitters local.
The only way you get a minor league union is if the major league players insist on it. And as much as we like to paint the owners as greedy unfeeling ogres, it has been quite apparent that the saintly major league players just don’t care. I’m not sure I blame them. I wouldn’t want my labor negotiations being dominated by the voting of short career teenagers toiling in the rookie league.
Soon to be followed by cutting many minor league teams and jobs to offset the increase.
Sadly, there is a powerful strain in American thought and culture that glorifies the uber-wealthy, the corporate titan and even the soulless, heartless corporate behemoth. Accordingly, these figures are the ultimate measure of capitalistic “success,” and they are thereby to be envied and celebrated. Because they have wielded the methods of capitalistic aggrandizement so much better than mere mortals, those methods are not only excused, but are admired and, when possible, copied. Paradoxically, it’s many of the very same people who are the victims of corporate greed and corruption who buy into this bizarre mythology. The kinds of abuses we see perpetrated by MLB (and countless other powerful corporate entities) won’t change until our culture stops fetishizing those who amass vast wealth and power.
There are independent minor league teams. What do they pay their players? Understanding that those are all nonprospects (else they wouldn’t be available to said independent team, and yes a few will still make the Show), any reason we couldn’t see their pay as fair market value? (honest question, not trying make any political point)
Those leagues cannot possibly be considered a determinant of ‘fair market value’ because there is no such thing as a free market in baseball. They get strangled on the revenue side by the MLB media contracts (which therefore makes them completely dependent on attendance) – and on the player pipeline by MLB and NCAA. The young players with upside who do play in the independent leagues tend to be either a)pawns in a negotiation between MLB team and player agent (Scherzer, Paxton) or b) damaged goods released by their MLB team who rehab their way back to MLB (D Peralta). There is no longer either a local player scouting advantage where a team can scout/develop/sign and then make some money by flipping the player contract to MLB(as there was in baseball before the draft) or a local ‘corporate sponsor’ type league where a player/employee would play the sport on a semi-pro type basis (as there was in basketball and still is with some Olympic sports).
MLB determines the terms and conditions of the sport of baseball in the US. Everyone else is just an ant trying to avoid getting squashed by the oblivious (or possibly malign) elephant. Until Americans decide that baseball is bigger than MLB – and put its governance under an independent sports governing body rather than under a specific group of owners; then we are left with whatever MLB decides is best for themselves – and eff you that’s why.
I don’t see the comparison. The Springfield Isotopes are perfectly free to sell their broadcast to the local radio station if there’s interest on the station’s part. As for ‘competing’ for employees, my small town law firm won’t be hiring Ivy League law school graduates anytime soon or ever, but they’re still operating in a free market.
Oh, and it’s my small town’s firm, not mine.
You seriously don’t understand the difference between a team negotiating a contract with a local station (which BTW is always the case) v a league negotiating with a regional sports network or regionally-owned stations?
And as for competing for employees, paying athletes offseason, while giving them time off to play competitively during a season – the McPherson Globe Refiners, Peoria Caterpillars, Phillips 66’ers (Bartlesville, OK), and Wichita Vickers found huge benefits doing just that. Just look at the rosters of say the 1936-1968 Olympic basketball teams. There are still in fact many big employers in small towns – and attracting those employers is exactly why small towns build sports facilities. That doesn’t solve the problem of a league being able to sustain itself – but of course there is no solution to that when that league would be subject to anti-trust law and MLB isn’t.
We need to be very careful with the assumption (I’m picking on your comment, but I see it elsewhere) that the best X (say, 5000) players are in affiliated baseball. There are numerous players, maybe more than 2000 or so every year that decide to stop playing for one reason or another. Maybe that degree in chemical engineering with the job offer from Pfizer is paying better than the Pioneer league, and there are almost certainly other possibilities.
Adjusting the wages up might actually attract some of those players back into affiliated baseball. Those players in independent baseball or just plain old adult leagues might well be worth a LOT more than they are paid to play.
Some of the top 5000 players are also in college, or are playing a different professional sport.
Absolutely.
There will always be a an endless supply of kids that will take those opportunities to play baseball for less. At every other level the players incur the costs to play baseball themselves. How many thousands of dollars do mom and dad form out? Baseball at the minor league level isn’t a high paying profession – just like most fun jobs where you can scrape to make a living. Those players are living out their dreams. At some point, they have to decide when to leave and get a higher paying career but that really isn’t that different from a lot of things. They will have many doors open to them later on due to the fact that they played professional baseball. They don’t play baseball for the money.
It’s true that they’re not playing baseball for the money. But if you expect someone to treat baseball(including training and conditioning) as a full time job rather than as a hobby, then you should expect to pay them as for a full time job because they need something to live on.
Do the teams want them waiting tables at Applebee’s during the offseason or training?
From what I hear, they seem, increasingly, to want them training and conditioning. That means they need to pay SOMETHING for that time.
I don’t know what professional teams are doing, but college teams expect you to absolutely take care of yourself year round, and try to arrange it so you are on campus as close to year round as possible. They weren’t doing it when I was an undergrad, but my graduate institution basically required athletes to wear a tracker PARTICULARLY to monitor your sleep. I know specific cases in other professional leagues where they do the same.
I can’t imagine baseball teams would be less sophisticated and controlling, but I don’t know.
It’s a bit much to call training and especially conditioning “work” that should be compensated. A lots of guys in their 20s work out–whether they play professional sports for a living or wait tables at Applebee’s for a living. The latter group actually pays to work out, by purchasing a gym membership or their own workout equipment. But minor league players are exploited because they’re not being paid for their time spent working out? Riiiiiiiiiiight.
“Baseball at the minor league level isn’t a high paying profession – just like most fun jobs where you can scrape to make a living. Those players are living out their dreams.”
The dream is to make the majors, not play in the minors for less than minimum wage.
“They will have many doors open to them later on due to the fact that they played professional baseball.”
Such as?
In small towns, yes, returning sports heroes have doors open for them, never mind that they never quite make the Show. I wouldn’t put too big a $$$ value on that increased opportunity, but it is there.
You’ve heard of ‘last hired, first fired’? Returning sports heroes are always ‘first hired’, after which they do have to then earn their keep.
I’ve personally known 3 minor leaguers. The money does matter, but yeah, they were mainly living out the dream of playing a fun sport they loved for money. None of the 3 thought ‘the System!’ was cheating them, they play too many games in half empty stadia/arenas to get a big head as to what value they’re producing for society playing at that level.
Lots of negative reacts you’re getting. People don’t like being told truths about economics. This site really has become an activist hub.
People don’t like understanding that baseball has almost nothing to do with free market capitalism.
Minor league baseball players are employees who deserve better treatment and a fair wage. This current change in pay is an acknowledgment of the issue (no small victory) and a good but incomplete step. More should be done – in terms of wage, living condition, etc. Full stop.
(Heck, one of the primary competitive advantages that could be gained is not just in terms of wage but in terms of health, food security, living conditions, sleep & betterment, etc. How many players would see their development curve improve with respect to these items? It still baffles me that a team doesn’t get on the right side of history and, also, seize this competitive advantage. How much did the Mariners and Mets invest in Edwin Diaz to get to the 2019 offseason and realize that he lacked a nutrition plan or an understanding of how best to put fuel into his engine?)
However, using Uber as a reference completely undercuts the intellectual honesty of the (very strong) argument you are trying to make. Most Uber drivers pursue rideshare as a supplementary source of income, not a primary means of earning a living. This is an entirely different logic set than a minor league baseball player, who is expected to train and develop year-round in pursuit of their craft. Also, polling has shown that a majority of Uber drivers believe that being classified as contractors more accurately presents their status and is their preferred treatment rather than being treated as employees. It is a fallacy to equate these two arguments.
Great piece, Rian. I’d be interested in a follow-up piece where you offer a framework for what would be enough. Based on your breakdown of the assumed hourly rate, are you coming at this from the perspective that MLB should offer a living wage (say, $15/hr price indexed to the specific metro area) based on a *realistic* estimate of the actual number of hours required to play minor league baseball and either develop into a major leaguer or provide good competition for those that will?
unfortunately dream jobs don’t always pay what you would like….ask 80% of Americans
“And all of the scenarios assume either that players are independently wealthy or that they’ll fit their year-round conditioning and training in around finding some other way to make money seven or nine months out of the year.”
Or maybe the scenarios assume that players got a 5- or 6- or 7-figure signing bonus (which they certainly did) and they didn’t blow it?
Kind of hard to feel too bad for these guys who start their “careers” with a huge chunk of money up front, and then proceed to get paid to play a game for a living. They’re living the dream of playing ball professionally, with a shot at making the big leagues!
Compare that to most kids their age, who come out of college about the same amount behind (in student loan debt) as these guys are ahead (with the bonus) and *then* proceed to start at maybe 12 to 15 bucks an hour in some crappy job that probably doesn’t even follow from the subject of their degree, all while making loan payments.
For all these years, minor league players have found ways to survive on the wages they’ve been paid, and now they get a 40% raise. I don’t see why everyone is crying their eyes out. If minor league players are unable to budget the signing bonuses and need to be paid more annually, then maybe MLB should consider reducing the signing bonuses. Maybe by a lot.
Meh. Some of your points make sense, and I agree that grads should be paid a lot more, but the best 5k of anything in the world is a lot better than a college grad. 50k med school grads per year for example. You can’t compare someone who is one of the 5k best of 8 billion in the world to a college graduate.
The top 5K in the world thing, even if true (which it is not), is a red herring. In baseball (as in all types of entertainment), the earnings are concentrated at the top. The top 780 or so get MLB roster spots, and the rest are trying to get into the top 780. The top 5000 is no more significant than the top 10,000 or the top 20,000. Most of the top 20,000 baseball players in the world are playing for free.
Are you aware that most minor leaguers got either no signing bonus or a tiny one like $5-10k that makes no long-term difference?
Really? You have a source for that? Because from what I’m seeing, anyone drafted in the top 10 rounds gets a bonus well into the six figures. How far down do you need to go to get below $5-10K? How far down to get to zero?
There’s an interesting article at Beyondtheboxscore by Justin Perline (posted in 2017) that illustrates how signing bonuses work. Obviously, not everyone gets a huge number, but even the last pick in a 40-round amateur draft apparently stands to get more than $10K, if the last sentence in the article is accurate:
“The average signing amount gradually descends to $17,881 by the final pick in the draft, but there is no clear way to predict a dollar amount because the talent varies so wildly.”
Are you arguing that J2 players average under 10K in bonuses? Because that also seems pretty doubtful to me.
Here’s a link to that article. I posted it in a separate reply, in case it gets lost in moderation.
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2017/12/1/16715898/amateur-draft-bonus-analysis-slot-mlb
Surely there are some minor leaguers who got bonuses under 10K, but is it accurate to say “most”?
Back in the 80s and 90s when Albany NY had the Yankees’ AA team, the players all had part-time jobs – mostly fake jobs as “bartenders” at local restaurants. They were paid to hang out at the bar and chat with customers.
Players got free meals, and they got under the table tips for “work” as greeters at bars and restaurants. Not a fortune, but for kids from age 18 to 22, not that bad.
I have no doubt that practice is common.
When I was 22 I worked very long hours for FREE as an intern at a government law office. I did not get free meals or fake tips for fake work as a greeter at a bar.
The other thing is – many minor leaguers start their careers with signing bonuses that are several years’ salary for most 18 year olds.
I hope minor leaguers get as much money as they can. But I don’t see why there is such concern for them.
Why was nobody concerned about me at age 22 working for FREE as an intern? I had not a dime to my name. Nothing. And nobody did a thing to help me.
Hell, good for you. When I was 22 I missed out on a lot of great internships because I couldn’t afford to work for free.
Take those new minimum salaries, and double it. Then pay them for spring training at the same rate. There I’ve solved it to a pretty reasonable rate.
That’s simply wage work. They’re not building towards a retirement. Hopefully they’re getting some skills to work at a regular job.
In what industry does the average employee start off with a $40000 signing bonus? This always seems to be left out of these discussions. I looked at signing bonuses for the 2011 10th round and the average bonus for players likely to never contribute a nickel to the companies bottom line was $75000. Cry me a frickin river! That was 9 years ago too
Well, you guys proved it: nothing is ever enough. The minor leaguers get a massive raise and all I see here is “It’s not enough!”
I missed the part where any of you were thankful that they got such a big raise. Well, they’re going to be thankful for it, and I’m thankful for it, even if you’re not.
I still don’t understand why teams don’t step up when it comes to food for their minor leaguers. Their performance is literally tied to maintaining their physical tools, but lots of these kids are on the ramen, rice, and beans plan because that’s what they can afford. Even if you chose not to pay a full living wage, it simply has to be a development advantage to give these kids the equivalent of the “training tables” that you see at major college football programs. Hire the chefs and nutritionists and lay out the spread a couple times a day. Guys will happily live in tiny dorm rooms and shared apartments if you’re giving them the fuel they need to perform. And by providing it, you can also control it, ensuring they’re getting what they need (showing up when they’re supposed to, etc).
You’d also mollify a lot of the detractors regarding the wages if you could point to “yeah, but look at the free meals that are part of their compensation”.
“while about as convincing as Uber’s case that the drivers who steer cars hailed on their app are independent contractors rather than employees who deserve fair wages and a stake in the company’s success”
Uber’s case is fairly convincing under the FLSA, and more convincing than that of MiLB. Most regular taxi drivers are independent contractors who rent a car (and/or medallion, depending on local jurisidiction) for weeks at a time. Considering among the 20 factors that the IRS uses to determine whether someone is an independent contractor or employee Uber has several elements that point in its favor, even more so than that of taxi drivers who rent a car and medallion (but who indeed often do respond to hails); while certainly there are factors that cut in the other direction it is at least a difficult decision (outside of statutory determinations in states such as California which make them, along with freelance journalists, employees). Drivers are able to work for Uber, Lyft, and competitors simultaneously, and switch between them very freely, including during the week. They provide their own tools and equipment.
That’s very different from minor league players, who are much more strongly controlled by the teams.
The entire premise of this article is nonsense. The players are paid wonderfully and it is easy to tell that they are because the teams have absolutely no problem filling the positions. If the players they want are not willing to play at the pay they are offering, then the pay is too low.
Another way to look at it. Ask this question, is there someone else offering to pay them more to play baseball (or something similar)? If not, then they are paying them enough.
It is crazy that we are having this conversation in parallel with discussion that they will be closing down teams as well.
We should probably mention the Toronto Blue Jays in this article. They raised minor league pay across the board a few years ago so their prospects don’t have to bag groceries in the off season.