Minor league players may lose minimum wage protection in the new omnibus bill

[Boston Red]

Until you hit free agency, or the 40-man roster, being a top prospect means nothing. Nick Senzel makes the same amount of money that Evan Mitchell makes. Actually, he would make less, because Mitchell has been in Triple-A before, so he gets a small bump per month that a first time Triple-A guy doesn't get.

Well, other than your signing bonus (assuming you came in as a top prospect and didn't just develop into one).

[klw]

If I am correct the Reds will have 9 minor league teams this year. (https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...ate.cgi?id=CIN ) So assume 30 players per team or 270 total. To add $10k to each players salary would add $2,700,000 to the payroll or half of Alf Rod bonus or the slot money for the 23rd pick in the draft. (https://www.baseballamerica.com/stor...d-bonus-pools/) I would like to think a team would do this to aid in player development. If they were to pay more, a minor leaguer could focus more energy and time on getting fitter and more skilled instead of how he will support himself and his family and potentially lead to better players coming out of the system. Seems a good way to build goodwill and good players.




Edit: correct slot money comparison

[dougdirt]

If I am correct the Reds will have 9 minor league teams this year. (https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...ate.cgi?id=CIN ) So assume 30 players per team or 270 total. To add $10k to each players salary would add $2,700,000 to the payroll or half of Alf Rod bonus or the slot money for the 25th pick in the draft. (https://www.baseballamerica.com/stor...d-bonus-pools/) I would like to think a team would do this to aid in player development. If they were to pay more, a minor leaguer could focus more energy and time on getting fitter and more skilled instead of how he will support himself and his family and potentially lead to better players coming out of the system. Seems a good way to build goodwill and good players.

You are not correct. They will have eight: DSL (1 team), AZL, Greeneville, Billings, Dayton, Daytona, Pensacola, Louisville.

[klw]

You are not correct. They will have eight: DSL (1 team), AZL, Greeneville, Billings, Dayton, Daytona, Pensacola, Louisville.

So that lowers the approximate cost by 30 players or $300K to $2,400,000. About the level of the 27th pick.

[kpresidente]

So that lowers the approximate cost by 30 players or $300K to $2,400,000. About the level of the 27th pick.

The lower levels have more than 30 players. They have "inactive" players. I think it's AA they stop doing that, and have a fixed roster number. It doesn't really matter to the overall numbers, though. I think you're wrong about player development. No matter how hard Doug tries to sell it, I don't believe these players are starving, or that they're trying to feed a family (these are 18-21 yo kids). If they weren't getting food, the teams would give them enough money for food. What they don't want to do is give them drinking money.

[RedTeamGo!]

The lower levels have more than 30 players. They have "inactive" players. I think it's AA they stop doing that, and have a fixed roster number. It doesn't really matter to the overall numbers, though. I think you're wrong about player development. No matter how hard Doug tries to sell it, I don't believe these players are starving, or that they're trying to feed a family (these are 18-21 yo kids). If they weren't getting food, the teams would give them enough money for food. What they don't want to do is give them drinking money.

Are you insinuating this is a good thing so players don’t take the extra money and get drunk?

[Kinsm]

Carrying that further, if each players earns $20,880 a summer. A team employs a 27(?) man roster, let's say they average having 3 guys on DL. That would be $626,400 a team. For the 4 full season clubs that would be about $2.5 million to field all your full season teams.

Given those numbers, it's hard to justify the exemption in my mind.

Every mlb club has roughly 300 players under contract. The Reds right now have 307 players under contract and only 39 of them are protected by the union at the moment.

[Larry Schuler]

Are you insinuating this is a good thing so players don’t take the extra money and get drunk?

Hey now. You're getting political by inferring low paid workers don't waste income on their alcoholism.

[klw]

The lower levels have more than 30 players. They have "inactive" players. I think it's AA they stop doing that, and have a fixed roster number. It doesn't really matter to the overall numbers, though. I think you're wrong about player development. No matter how hard Doug tries to sell it, I don't believe these players are starving, or that they're trying to feed a family (these are 18-21 yo kids). If they weren't getting food, the teams would give them enough money for food. What they don't want to do is give them drinking money.

I wasn't thinking in-season as much as off-season. If the guys can work out all off season the better. Build an Academy with player housing in Goodyear and pay them a living wage to live and train there in the Winter

http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index...ork_secon.html

Ben Heller, a reliever who ended last season with Double-A Akron, didn't realize he would need an offseason gig until he reached his first winter as a professional and his wallet was a barren wasteland.

"The money you get during the season helps you survive during the season," Heller said.

Players deploy their limited funds toward rent, food and other common living expenditures. They also must purchase their own bats and gloves, though agents sometimes provide that equipment.

His first offseason, Heller delivered pizzas for Papa John's.

Bryson Myles, an outfielder for Akron, considers it a Catch-22. Players without hefty signing bonuses or wealthy backgrounds must earn money during the offseason. But at what cost? Can they afford to sacrifice training or other methods of improving in their quest for a major league paycheck?

"You have to be able to make money," said Myles, who gives lessons and works odd jobs for his friends' parents. "But at the same time, there's never been a point where baseball wasn't the top priority. I have responsibilities of having some kind of an income, but at the end of the day, I have to do whatever I have to do to prepare myself to be ready for the next season. There's a lot of time management that goes into it."

Remember Tim Adelman?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.5609d47cf5d4

After that 2012 season in El Paso, Adleman moved in with his grandparents in the Connecticut home where his mom grew up. His grandmother had been shopping at the Village Market for years and was friendly with management, because she’s friendly with everyone. “I think if you go down there, they’ve got a spot for you,” she told her grandson. What did he have to lose from taking a brief food sabbatical?

“It was just like what any other minor leaguer would do who needed to make some cash on the side, because we don’t make anything during the season,” Adleman said. “And so, four to five days a week, from 8 to 2, I was back there, wrapping international cheeses and packaging chicken pot pies and doing kind of whatever they needed.”

Or Josh Smith
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/...econd-job.html

Bonuses for later round picks are extremely low and the minors don’t pay very well from year-to-year either. Smith, who earns less than $10K per year in salary, quickly figured out that he needed to take on a full-time job in the offseason. Longtime pitching coach Tracy Valentine, a former minor leaguer himself, also ran a pool construction business and had a need for a physically strong employee who could haul bulky, cumbersome bags of cement from the truck to backyards. That position, while greatly appreciated by the pitcher, didn’t give Smith the hours or pay that he needed to make ends meet.

“I don’t need side cash,” Smith told Valentine. “I need a job.”

With that, Smith began actually building the pools and earning a bit more cash.

Smith still helps to guide young arms and build pools in the offseason, even though he has reached Triple-A and is knocking on the door of the Reds’ major league roster. His particular offseason job might be unique, but it’s a lifestyle that is not at all uncommon for minor leaguers, Smith says.

“My old college teammate Caleb Joseph is in the bigs now with the Orioles, but when he was in the minors, he would come home and work at the local country club as a caddy and a waiter. Some guys do construction, some work in restaurants. Everyone does what they need to do in the offseason to make ends meet,” Smith explained.

[757690]

Let's do the math. From MLB website:

First contract season: $1,100/month maximum. After that, open to negotiation.
Alien Salary Rates: Different for aliens on visas as mandated by INS (the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service).
Meal Money: $25 per day at all levels, while on the road.


Players play around 6 games a week. Games last around 3 hours, and there is around 3 hours a game they need to be at the stadium both before and after. That's 36 hours a week. I think we can round up to 40, considering extra innings, double headers, etc.

So any time not spent playing or preparing for a game, would be considered overtime. First year players are getting paid around $7 an hour. Their overtime pay would be $10.50 an hour. If they worked 20 hours of overtime a week, that adds up to an extra $840 a player a month, or an extra $5040 a season (six month season).

Let's assume all 300 players in the system get this. That is an extra $1,512,000 per team for overtime. Let's say half of those get paid double. That would put each team's cost at $2,268,000.

I am guessing an extra 20 hours of overtime a week is high, and I am guessing most players make closer to $1100 a month. That also assumes all the foreign players are making that minimum, which the rules state they don't have to, and I am guessing they don't.

So at most, it seems this would cost teams around and extra $2M a season, and probably closer to an extra $1M a season.

[Redsfaithful]

It's just so stupid.

Your bonus babies don't have to haul concrete or deliver pizza due to their signing bonuses feeding them, and I don't think major league teams care about the other guys for whatever reason.

It's hard not to view it as casual vindictiveness.

[Kinsm]

It's just so stupid.

Your bonus babies don't have to haul concrete or deliver pizza due to their signing bonuses feeding them, and I don't think major league teams care about the other guys for whatever reason.

It's hard not to view it as casual vindictiveness.

They don't care about them because they almost never produce in the bigs. They are filler, nothing more - nothing less. 1 in 3 minor leaugers initial bonus was less than 10K$. 2 in 3 signs for less than 100K$. Is it a bad thing that guys who are used as "practice dummies" also have to get a job during the off-season?

You have to ask yourself, do clubs really need 8-9 farm teams? If you don't think so then you have to buy into MLB's argument that they'll simply cut players from their system and consolidate teams due to these increased costs.

[Redsfaithful]

They don't care about them because they almost never produce in the bigs.

Absolutely, but it's not hard to counter with why they should.

1. Obviously, some of them do pan out and become useful assets. Maybe a small percentage more would if they were able to focus on baseball year round.

2. You need players for your star prospects to play against, and you'd probably prefer that competition's level of play be higher rather than lower, given the choice.

It doesn't even get into morality or the right thing to do. You can make a business case for treating these players better.

[757690]

Absolutely, but it's not hard to counter with why they should.

1. Obviously, some of them do pan out and become useful assets. Maybe a small percentage more would if they were able to focus on baseball year round.

2. You need players for your star prospects to play against, and you'd probably prefer that competition's level of play be higher rather than lower, given the choice.

It doesn't even get into morality or the right thing to do. You can make a business case for treating these players better.

Exactly. If the Reds get one bench player out of improving the way they treat their minor leaguers every 5 years, it will more than pay for itself. Add to that, producing a more competitive playing environment for their true prospects, it’s makes even more sense.

[mth123]

Here's another thing...... anything over 40 hours in a week would be time and a half. To me, the smart thing for baseball to do would be come to an agreement with the players, that gives the minor leaguers better pay, in exchange for a CBA acknowledgment that the "special situation" of baseball makes minimum wage rules impractical.

I wonder if that is in the CBA already. Bottom line is they should pay the minor leaguers better.

This sounds like a great idea, but I wonder if it can actually happen. If paying below minimum wage is illegal (and it is) you can't make a vaild contract to do something that is against the law. Not sure if that would stand-up in the CBA if challenged or if some grandstanding congressman made an issue of it for the publicity. I think they just need to up the salaries. For the cost of four or five mimimum wage big leaguers they could double the pay of the entire minor league organization.

I think an increase in wages to the minor leagues could lead to a downsizing of the minor leagues though. Maybe not so many guys in extended spring training or the instructional league and maybe a level or two disappears (say Billings and the Arizona league reds becomes one team and A ball consolidates to one level). Teams will be filled with prospects and the organizational guys who round out the teams will probably start to disappear as they consolidate.