The Yankees Found Another Way To Outspend Every Other Team
The Yankees have found new ways to exploit their financial advantage in recent years. For a long time, they were the team spending the most money on big league payroll by a good margin, then other teams caught up after the addition of the luxury tax along with an Hal Steinbrenner being more focused on the bottom line than his father. The Yankees never really blew things out in the draft when they had the opportunity, but now there are essentially hard caps on draft spending and extra picks are tougher to come by with recent changes to the CBA.
The Yankees saw these two market opportunities dry up while their revenues stayed high and they pinpointed the international market as a target. As a result of spending nearly $30 million dollars on teenagers last summer, the Yankees now cannot sign a player for over $300,000 for the next two summers. If they get lucky with some timing, they may still be able to make this one-year international blowout even more advantageous, but their competitive advantage has mostly passed in these three markets for the time being.
An Under-The-Radar Market
With limited avenues to spend their money, where have the Yankees turned now? Minor league free agents. Starting today, free agents can sign with any club and most fans will focus on the splashy big money major league signings. Sometimes, a former standout major leaguer that’s past him prime will sign a minor league deal with a Spring Training invite and fans may hold out hope this player can regain past form. Below even this radar are the often first time free agents with little to no big league service that are signed to minor league deals with Spring Training invites and little fanfare. This is where the Yankees have been frustrating most of baseball.
Nearly every franchise has an internal policy for signing these players, with a hard cap for monthly salary over the five months of the minor league season. These maximums are put in place to control costs and also to give executives a hard line to use in negotiations to make the process go more smoothly; there are clubs that will have dozens of negotiations happening at the same time, so hard-and-fast rules help filter out players that aren’t a fit. This maximum ranges from $12,000 to $20,000 per month depending on the team.
The second tier of minor league free agents usually wait to see where the first tier signed and for how much money to then figure their market value and the best place to sign to maximize playing time and chance at a big league look. Some teams will make exceptions and sign a player above their maximum for certain situations, like an experienced 3rd catcher to play in Triple-A with a good chance for a call-up if a rookie catcher falters in the big leagues, but this is the exception rather than the rule; it’s seen as a one-time big league expense.
Enter the Evil Empire
Minor league free agency was a pretty straightforward process until the past few years, when the Yankees starting spending way more money on these players than any other team was comfortable spending. I was told last offseason that 3B Yangervis Solarte was a target for multiple teams in the minor league free agent market. Both executives, analysts and scouts from different types of organizations had pinpointed Solarte as being one of the top tier minor league free agents at this point last year. There wasn’t a huge bidding war for him alone, but multiple teams were calling his agent with offers on the first day of free agency. This also happened with a couple dozen other players deemed to be top tier free agents.
Logic follows that in this sort of situation, Solarte would sign with one of the teams that spends up to $20,000 per month ($100,000 for the a full season in the minors). The Yankees ended up signing him last offseason for $120,000 ($24,000 per month) with a split contract (meaning he’d make more than the MLB minimum if he is in the big leagues: $515,000 in this case instead of the $500,000 minimum), a Spring Training invite, provisions to leave for an Asian professional club during the year if he chooses and a guaranteed $66,000 salary ($13,200 per month) for the season even if he’s cut during Spring Training and he plays the whole season for another organization (or stays at home).
Rival clubs tell me that with other minor league free agents, the Yankees will routinely go up to $30,000 or $35,000 per month, include bonuses in addition to that salary, guarantee salaries (minor league salaries are not normally guaranteed like big league salaries) and offer bigger MLB salaries in split contracts. For the 2014 season, the Yankees gave righty reliever Jim Miller a split contract worth $210,000 in the minors ($42,000 per month) and $525,000 in the majors with a Spring Training invite. He pitched 2.2 innings for the big league team and 57.1 in Triple-A last season.
For the 2013 season, the Yankees paid C Bobby Wilson $180,000 ($36,000 per month) with half of it guaranteed, along with a $675,000 big league split (which he never got called up to collect) and a Spring Training invite. Wilson was the backup catcher in Triple-A Scranton that year and only collected 253 plate appearances. A source tells me that at least one other club promised him a starting role in Triple-A with a good shot at some big league time for about half as much money; this sort of decision is a common one for minor league free agents, but the salary gap usually isn’t as big unless the Yankees get involved.
In addition, these high salaries set the player’s market higher in subsequent seasons. That 2013 deal with the Yankees was his Wilson’s first free agent deal and in 2014, he got a split $130,000/$600,000 deal with the Diamondbacks, a Spring Training invite and picked up 4 plate appearances in the big leagues in September. For reference, in the six years of control before minor league free agency, monthly salaries max out at about $2,500 per month at the upper minors and closer to $1,500 at lower levels; each club has it’s own policy/scale for salaries by level for these players, though all the scales are similar. If you’re a player that signed for little to no bonus as a amateur, being a middle to top tier minor league free agent is actually a chance to cash in and earn market value for the first time.
Why Just The Yankees?
An executive with a medium market club told me last year that his team had a target list of about a dozen minor league free agents to target on day one of minor league free agency and the Yankees signed about half of those players to salaries that his team couldn’t come close to matching. Why don’t other teams spend what amounts to a trivial amount of money to get the minor league free agents that their scouts and analysts are telling them to target? I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer after asking a half dozen front office people. As mentioned above, part of it is cost control and having limits in place to make the negotiation process go smoother and more quickly with dozens of players in play for each team at any given time. The rest of it, as I’m told, are various versions of “this is the way things are done.”
One exec said if his team spent an extra $1 million to get all of their targets and none of those players ended up contributing to the big league team, it would open him up to scrutiny for taking money from another department, trying something different and wasting $1 million. On average, most teams will get a couple useful big leaguers if they sign their dozen top targets, but risk aversion decision making, akin to how NFL coaches treat fourth down decisions, seems to be holding back even the most forward-thinking clubs in this area.
Limits, Risks & Rewards
Executives caution that there is a theoretical limit to how much a team can pay a minor league free agent, with speculation that both MLB and the Players’ Association would tell a club that wanted to pay a minor leaguer a $300,000 salary that he should just be given a major league deal to avoid creating a big/small market disconnect in Triple-A. The Yankees haven’t gone that high yet, but they also don’t have much sustained competition in this market, so you’d have to think at some point this may become an issue if another team joins them.
Stockpiling deep upper minors rosters is the reason the Rule 5 Draft was created, but there is a way to work around these rules. These big minor league deals are often signed after the early Rule 5 Draft in December; both Wilson and Solarte signed their contracts in January. If the player is signed before the Rule 5 Draft, he could be taken by a team that doesn’t mind paying his big league salary, as happened in 2004 with Chris Gomez. In Miller’s case, his minor league split was so high, the Yankees could feel safe that he wouldn’t be selected; Miller signed in November.
A Yankees source told me they could break even financially with a $500 million payroll expenditure (including luxury tax), so this minor league free agent expenditure is still a trivial amount of money for them, though it would be less trivial for a small market club. Credit is still due to the Yankees for being open-minded enough to do the rational thing and spend their considerable resources in whatever way is available. Not every team does this, normally for bureaucratic reasons; you’d be surprised how difficult it is to move a seven figure sum from one department to another even within baseball operations.
It’s peculiar to me that, for a small amount in the scope of player acquisition budgets, a club could almost surely get an additional big league contributor and very few clubs seem inclined to shift their strategy to do it. In the case of the Yankees 2014 minor league free agent class, Solarte was good for the Yankees, then was half of what acquired Chase Headley for the 2014 stretch run, who himself created almost three wins in less than half a season with the Bombers. The profit from just the one-year Solarte signing/trade transaction is about $10 million, or roughly enough to pay for this minor league free agent strategy for another ten seasons.
Kiley McDaniel has worked as an executive and scout, most recently for the Atlanta Braves, also for the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. He's written for ESPN, Fox Sports and Baseball Prospectus. Follow him on twitter.
Spending a few more $$$ on AAA depth really seems like a no-brainer. It’s an insurance policy, and if you end up never needing it that doesn’t mean buying it was a waste. At a cost of $5-6M per win at the MLB level, spending an extra $1M on MiLB FAs seems terribly inconsequential.
Except this strategy only works if 1 team over-spends. As more teams overspend on minor league FAs you are just going to see the price of this group increase and the advantage disappear.
As a Blue Jays fan, this does not make me happy. There is very little to make me happy. My most hopeful times over the last twenty years are (1) the Jays’ hot May 2014; (2) the 2012/13 offseason; (3) the time we traded Vernon Wells; (4) the time we signed BJ Ryan and AJ Burnett; and (5) the time we managed to accumulate a lot of draft picks under the old compensation system.
Had this article been about the Blue Jays, it might have ranked #5. Yankee fans – is this also a top 5 moment from the last 20 years for you guys?
How would your team paying more for AAA players ever be a top 5 moment? Your priorities are nuts.
As a Yankee fan, this isn’t even in a top 1000 moments over the past 20 years.
You must either A) be a troll or B) not actually ready the article.
C) You do not detect sarcasm when it is readily apparent.
That isn’t sarcasm. That is stupid.
Agreed. You really are.
Bobby isn’t stupid, he’s making about $1.2 million per year from the Mets for the next two decades or so and he hasn’t played in the majors in over a decade. I call that brilliant!
Oh, wait, this probably isn’t the real Bobby Bonilla; this is Tollnilla and I’ve just entered into a Trollception scenario.
EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!
I think his point was that its not super exciting to be a Blue Jays fan.
The whole point of his post was to highlight what u said in your post. But you didn’t even realize it.
This is so dumb
The Jays are a sad story. After two titles,92’and 93′ where the city proved itself worthy of a team with more then 8 million tickets bought, they has been adrift at sea. Today,they simply won’t spend the money needed to win. The ownership is incredibly wealthy but does not care. Should they spend big on free agents? YES! They can afford it.What they have done lately doesn’t work. They need to blow up that Sky Dome and build a new styled stadium and hope that an ownership that cares about winning and thrilling the fans comes along. If not,they probably should be contracted.
Interesting find.
Really makes me sad that these guys only get paid $50k-$100k a year considering how close to MLB they are and how many years of experience they have. Solarte was a pretty decent MLB player last year and he had to negotiate just to make sure he could get paid $66k annually before the season..
Yeah it sucks when you’re not one of the best in your field and you still make $100k a year.
Some minor leaguers make less in a decade of pro ball than Bonilla makes in just one year two decades after his retirement lol.
Are you kidding me? They are absolutely some of the best in their field. The skill required to be a desirable minor-league free agent is immense! They’re probably one of the top 50-100 at their position in the world. Are you in the top 50-100 of anything? If they’re worth this much to teams (and they clearly are), they should be paid that much, rather than allowing teams and owners to artificially depress wages and keep the difference.
Yes I am one of the top 50 in the world at my specified profession. A profession that earns my company millions and my industry billions a year.
Almost anyone can say that if they do any kind of specialized subset of work which baseball is.
It doesn’t matter how much these players deserve – it’s a market value issue.
“I am one of the top 50 in the world at my specified profession”
Top 50 internet troll! How does that pay?
I think being one of the 3,000 or so best people on planet Earth at what you do qualifies these guys pretty well as “one of the best [their] field”.
Hardly. What percentage of people on the planet play baseball? At that point you can most likely rule out nearly 6 billion. Sure being top 3,000 out of the remaining billion sounds great but it isn’t some massive accomplishment.
Everyone has some talent or thing which they do that is makes them the top 3,000 in the world. It could be blowing bubbles, spitting on people, whatever.
Not impressive.
The thing with Baseball is that they can only earn in a given window (20-40 or so) while other professions permit one to continue for two or three more decades. Additionally, within this window, there’s a handful of millions that play baseball (on junior teams, at college, in leagues from Venezuela to Australia, and of course, as a hobby). There’s also selection bias though, because a lot of the sub standard players get removed from the playing population.
Really everyone has a talent that is in the top 4.3×10^-5 percentile? I think you underestimate how big the world is.
Well Bozo Bonilla, the reason that 6 billion people don’t play professional baseball is because they’re not good enough. I played 7 years in the Independent League making scraps and PAYING to play during the offseason. I quit 5 years ago at the age of 27 because of a back surgery and later a knee surgery. I would GLADLY be playing today at the age of 32 if I even had a remote chance of making the MINOR LEAGUES. And that is what the goal of most of the fellas in the Independent League is – latch on with a minor league team.
Oh – and we had a pool of about 50,000 amateur baseball players to choose from – and that was JUST the Frontier League.
So yeah. I know they say arguing with a fool makes two. So I won’t argue. I will simply say, shut up.
They are one of the best in their field buddy. I was a STAR in high school. Then at dI i was a bench player. By the time a guy is a minor league free agent he had proven himself one of the top 2000 guys in the entire world at what he does. They make NOTHING until then. Like mcdonalds assistant manager money dude
Most minor leaguers make between $3,000 and $7,500 for a season. I wouldn’t pity the handful who actually make a year’s living wage for five months of work.
It seems as though this advantage is far more philosophical than financial. They are simply willing to try it. Frankly, how can a small market team afford to NOT employ such a strategy?
Same reason that cost-conscious companies in other businesses will monitor paper-clip costs with a detailed process they paid a consultant seven figures for.
Folks who run the ship place a value of control for its own sake. This is why the executive Kiley mentions was worried about a $1 million dollar minor-league player expenditure – the “lost” money relative to that exec’s role would be huge, making him risk-averse about a decision that is really just small potatoes for the organization as a whole.
*place a value ON control for its own sake.
Ding ding ding! Also it threatens the entire cost control nature of the minor leagues.
It’s not just the six years of team major league control. The exploitation (strong word but come on. The average minor leaguer makes burger flipper money) allows the owner to protect themselves from themselves.
They constantly make terrible and obvious bad decisions that cost millions. Having a place where labor is highly undervalued balances the scales philosophically for them.
And control for control is always fun too
This is intelligent baseball management. Kudos to the Yankees.
Hey, Billy Beane! You are being outsmarted. By the *Yankees*. Get with it!
The Yankees have been outsmarting Billy Beane for more than a decade.
Yeah, Billy Beane is definitely too stupid to sign A-Rod to arguably the worst contract in sports history.
Just look at them
This is fantastic, Kiley! Thank you for shedding some light on this relatively unknown issue. Gives us another story line to follow this winter.
Detroit is the team that needs to adopt this. Overpay on every minor league free agent relief pitcher/marginal starter out there. If three of them work out suddenly they could have a very good bullpen without having to pay another $10 million a year for a single player.
Andrew Friedman has just forwarded your post to Magic.
Bidding wars for Brad Mills – coming soon to a franchise near you!
The problem with your theory is that if these hypothetical minor league free agents could actually get Major League hitters out, they wouldn’t be in the minors.
Flexing financial muscle in the minor league free agent market might turn up a few low-cost gainers, but it’s still a very inefficient way for the Yankees to use their resources. As noted, the team’s revenues continue to increase, while payroll stagnates or declines, meaning the Yankees are spending the lowest percentage of revenue on payroll since at least 2001 (see link below). The fact of the matter is the Yankees are one of the few teams that can still throw its weight around in free agency, but instead of doing so, the team has opted to focus more on maximizing profit margin than winning games. Plucking a few extra minor league free agents can’t make up the difference.
http://www.captainsblog.info/2014/01/20/is-tanaka-part-of-the-yankees-189-million-bluff-masahiro-tanaka-hal-steinbrenner-japan-payroll-brian-cashman/21209/
I fail to understand why you think this is some sort of either or proposition. They are scrooge mcduck swimming in cash, they can spend however they feel like. Dropping a million bucks in a gambit to have valuable resources later is absolutely something every team can afford.
And as far as the profit maximization goes – no duh. Name a team that isn’t trying to do that.
It has become either/or if you look at the numbers. The Yankees are making more money, but spending more. One reason they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel is because they aren’t as eager to pay up for the cream.
I guess you missed the part about the relative focus between profit and winning. The easiest way to maximize profit in the short term is slash costs. That’s particularly true in the era of big national and local TV contracts becoming the lion’s share of team revenue. The Yankees used to tilt the scale more toward winning. Now, profit seems a greater priority.
Should say “not spending more”.
The Tigers.
“Why don’t other teams spend what amounts to a trivial amount of money to get the minor league free agents that their scouts and analysts are telling them to target? I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer after asking a half dozen front office people. As mentioned above, part of it is cost control and having limits in place to make the negotiation process go smoother and more quickly with dozens of players in play for each team at any given time. The rest of it, as I’m told, are various versions of “this is the way things are done.”
It’s plain as day that they’re colluding to keep minor league salaries low. These are smart people who are giving you terrible reasons: they’re obviously being disingenuous. The Yankees are busting the cartel and other execs are pissed that they’re not following the rules about “the way things are done.”
“One exec said if his team spent an extra $1 million to get all of their targets and none of those players ended up contributing to the big league team, it would open him up to scrutiny for taking money from another department, trying something different and wasting $1 million.”
These are the same organizations that spend $100,000,000+ per year on player’s salaries, tens of millions per year on speculative draft signing bonuses, and are known to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to extremely risky individual players. Balking at $1 Million in this context is insane. This just reinforces the disingenuity of the execs. It’s obviously collusion.
This. I imagine that Kiley was afraid of saying the word collusion since that would impact his future interview access. I do wonder though if other large payroll clubs are going to join the Yanks to put an end to this whole thing.
Minor leaguers are not protected by a collective bargaining agreement, MLB is exempt from federal antitrust law, and minor league salaries are fixed by agreeement between MLB and the owners of every minor league team. Minor leaguers are not eligible for free agency unil they have seven years of service in the minor leagues, and then the MLB team can extend that control for up to three years by placing the player on the 40-man roster.
I get what you are saying, but it isn’t collusion in the legal sense. There is a small sample of players who are eligible for minor league free agency that teams are actually interested in signing. Most players who reach 7 or 10 years of professional baseball without landing on a MLB team have to find a new career. In any event, minor league free agents are free to negotiate their salaries, while the rest of minor leaguers who didn’t receive large signing bonueses are stuck with monthly salaries that are less than a homeless person can make in Santa Monica from government handouts. But if most MLB owners are simply not willing to spend much money to retain the services of aging minor leaguers, then how can it be collusion?
This is about six year minor league free agents. The one time when their salaries are no longer controlled.
Every year a bunch of these guys produce positive value for teams. Usually as utility or bullpen pieces but sometimes more.
The collusion theory is based upon the inability for executives to explain their behavior.
In order to collude there has to be specific communication and agreement but yeah, this sure looks like collusion.
Regardless of union representation, regardless of anti trust exemption. No industry is allowed to collude anti competitively. In theory of course.
31 upvotes: Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.
A very legitimate lawsuit would disagree with your attitude towards the subject.
so the Yankees are basically doing arbitrage on AAA players? Seems like a strategy Banknotes Harper could get behind.
I may have misinterpreted this ,but it seems like the 29 other franchises were attempting to collude in order to keep the prices of thes MiLB guys down. The amount of money the Yankees are spending on this is not a lot in the grand scheme of baseball. I can’t think of any other reason other than ”
if we all stick to the same strategy, we’ll all save some money”.
I agree with Dan and Jianadaren above. It’s pretty obvious that “it’s hard to get $1 mil approved for your department” explanation doesn’t go very far.
I bet the MLBPA cares about this. But to make demands on behalf of the minor leaguers would probably involve concessions on the part of the major leaguers.
MLBPA doesn’t represent minor leaguers. Being a non-drafted minor leaguer sucks: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/baseball-broshuis-minor-league-wage-income
Disagree that it’s collusion.
While it’s a neat thought and it’s useful to a team like the Yankees who have nearly limitless financial flexibility, it’s not a particularly valuable practice. The article notes that Yangervis Solarte is an exceptional example, and what he was worth ten times their investment in the end. However, Bobby Wilson is another example. He was useful depth but his number never got called and his acquisition was essentially unnecessary. So while you might have a Solarte that’s worth 10x the investment, you have several Bobby Wilsons that never contribute.
If you have enough Wilsons that contribute nothing and few Solartes, it’s a losing proposition and all you might have to show for it is a few AAA championships.
This is only of value to teams that have money like the Yankees, Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, etc. and it still isn’t a winning proposition, just one they can afford.
You aren’t getting the math. One Solarte works, and you pay for this strategy for ten years. Explain to me how that is a losing proposition? It’s collusion, you fool.
“Logic follows that in this sort of situation, Solarte would sign with one of the teams that spends up to $20,000 per month ($100,000 for the a full season in the minors). The Yankees ended up signing him last offseason for $120,000 ($24,000 per month) with a split contract (meaning he’d make more than the MLB minimum if he is in the big leagues: $515,000 in this case instead of the $500,000 minimum), a Spring Training invite, provisions to leave for an Asian professional club during the year if he chooses and a guaranteed $66,000 salary ($13,200 per month) for the season even if he’s cut during Spring Training and he plays the whole season for another organization (or stays at home).”
The Yankees essentially gave Solarte an extra $20K if he was in the minors, an extra $15K if he was in the minors, and an extra $66K if he ended up on another team, relative to what he’d normally be offered.
According to the article, the Yankees earned about $10M in profit from the Solarte signing (quibble with those numbers if you like). With that profit they could conceivably sign around 20 Solartes, pay their full MLB salaries, have those players contribute literally nothing, and still break even.
It’s almost certainly collusion. This wouldn’t be the first time for MLB either. Anytime you ask a highly paid executive “why don’t you also adopt this strategy that appears to be profitable?” and he responds with “this just isn’t how things are done,” your bullshit detector should be going wild.
Exfuckingactly. These are highly successful people. Anytime anyone anywhere ever can’t explain their behavior your bullshit detector should be exploding
I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that minor league free agents had a sort of unspoken agreement with the big league clubs that, if a different MLB team had a opening on their team, and wanted said player as a replacement, they were granted their release. Most long time minor league players want as shot at the big leagues, and any team that regularly stood in their way would find it difficult to attract talent in the future. Under that scenario, it doesn’t really make sense to pay more than others, as you are getting no benefit.
It depends – these minor leaguers have two goals…
1) Get to the majors
2) Have a roof over their head and cash after they are booted out
The Yankees have an older team often, one that is likely to have injuries. If you are a minor leaguer it wouldn’t be hard to go ‘player xyz could get hurt then I get a shot, plus I get more money up front’ to justify signing there instead of elsewhere. Minor leaguers also would know that even if a position in the majors is wide open there is a strong move by most teams to promote their own minor leaguers first, then give a lifetime AAAA guy a shot.
The old bird in the hand vs 2 in the bush argument will apply I suspect to many – better to get an extra $20k for certain than to hope for the lottery win of reaching the majors.
I think an awful lot of confusion stems from people not knowing just how horribly milb players are paid. Even a site like this.
These guys make far less than unskilled laborers.
I’m a carpenter. When i hire a helper occasionally i pay him/her more than these guys.
You are talking slot guys who are near the best in the world at their job. With high potential for catastrophic injury and an EXTREMELY small earning window.
Yet they are making between $9,000 and $13,000 a year?
I actually believe raising minor league pay is an important issue. And one that would benefit teams.
How many guys could be better if the intense stress of low wages weren’t on them.
How many guys would practice and play year round if they didn’t have to sell used cars in the offseason
And morally I’m always for money going from billionaires to thousandaires
There is no evidence that this is collusion, and there is hardly evidence that this is even a beneficial strategy for most teams. It is not near as simple as finding 1 Solarte every 10 years and getting a 1.5 win player. You would be accumulating several projected 0 WAR types to fill up your AAA roster. Some will be 0-2 WAR/600 guys and some will be below replacement/600 in actual performance. The question would be whether these minor league free agents perform $1 million/year better than other teams normal replacement players. Teams money may still be better off spent in the free agent market and Kiley provides no evidence that this is an optimal strategy for most teams.
did not mean to imply that I think anything Kiley did is wrong, just that it is an unfounded claim to say that this is collusion or a good strategy for a team like the Marlins.
Regarding the minors versus majors payroll, I’ve seen it stated that many owners like to set limits on expenditures in a given area. It’s very easy to blithely say “well you’re paying this free agent guy $20mil a year, why can’t you free up $1mil elsewhere for something else”. Finances in real life don’t work like just shifting eggs around different baskets, it’s far more complicated than many fans perceive.
There’s a world of difference between “Solarte was worth $10m” and “Solarte was worth as much as a $10m free agent would have been.”
Is this like that riddle in elementary – what is more valuable: 1 – a quarter, two dimes and a nickel or 2. – two quarters?
Giving a little bit more money to the minors would result in more players sticking around, I’d have thought. If there’s a decent living wage available in the minors, this might encourage more people to stay in the game, and feed down to the school level, where I read baseball is having a tough time competing for athletes with hand-egg and basketball.
I’m sure the PA has no interest in claiming collusion – once they get the call, they see minor leaguers (if they think about them at all) as just a bunch of guys who would do their job for less money. Minor leaguers would have to find a lawyer to launch a class-action, but that would only be against minor-league owners – literally not the same ballpark as going after MLB owners. Once again, MLB has insulated itself against liability.
Seems to me like more mindless Yankee-bashing.
Pretty ridiculous when Yankee-bashers have to point to something as trivial as minor league free agents to scapegoat Yanks. Even the author of this piece (and I know he’s written some very good stuff in past) recognizes that MLB under Selig has basically cut off every opportunity for Yankees to fairly compete. The untold truth of MLB is that the Yankees have been FORCED into spending money because they are penalized for their financial success and for the team philosophy of trying to win each year. Yes, trying to win instead of tanking every second year (does Boston come to mind?) The Yankees spend to win in large part because they start with disadvantage of low draft picks. How else to compete except to spend? Revenue sharing, luxury taxes, tighter draft rules — the whole unbalanced Selig formula — only makes it more necessary to win through spending. And the Yankees have learned that if the team goes downhill, revenues deflate even faster. I’m sure Selig is very proud of his legacy. He has always been pathologically obsessed with throttling New York. It appears that he’s succeeded.