Neither is any MLB team, for that matter. And Congress wants to keep it that way. I wrote an article on the .com today about it: http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/editorial-opinion/congress-engaging-in-minor-league-meddling/
Red Sox Aren't Paying Their Minor Leaguers Enough
- Thread starter JesusQuintana
- Start date
Appreciate that. Not everyone gives a shit, but for those who do, I have a seemingly limitless supply.
Great article!
250 minor leaguers. If they gave all of them$1,000 a month more, for the 5 months of the minor league season, that would be an extra $1.25 million. Less than half what they're paid to Ryan Hannigan and Craig Breslow last year.
The idea that they can't pay minor leaguers more is a freakin joke.
And it's not just about fairness, we just saw a situation where paltry minor league pay led to the loss of talent from baseball. Anthony Varvaro retired from baseball to become a Port Authority of Ny and NJ police officer. Their pay and benefits are superior to AAA baseball. AAA baseball players are among the 750th to 1,500th best players in the entire world. That's absurd.
The monopsony power granted by baseball's antitrust exemption is being used by these teams to line their own pockets. This is not surprising, but it sure as bell isn't a competitive market that should be exempt from labor laws. Walmart is often the target of SJWs, but Walmart states in green eyed envy of the special deal MLB and other sports leagues get. If I were king for a day, baseball's antitrust exemption would be eliminated and the ability of a group of rich players and their agents to form a "union" that did not include minor leaguers but bargained away their market power would similarly be canceled.
I'd love to see any one of the executives who have accounts here on SOSH drop by and try to justify their ability to pay less than minimum wage given the special treatment they get that already drives down wages substantially.
250 minor leaguers. If they gave all of them$1,000 a month more, for the 5 months of the minor league season, that would be an extra $1.25 million. Less than half what they're paid to Ryan Hannigan and Craig Breslow last year.
The idea that they can't pay minor leaguers more is a freakin joke.
And it's not just about fairness, we just saw a situation where paltry minor league pay led to the loss of talent from baseball. Anthony Varvaro retired from baseball to become a Port Authority of Ny and NJ police officer. Their pay and benefits are superior to AAA baseball. AAA baseball players are among the 750th to 1,500th best players in the entire world. That's absurd.
The monopsony power granted by baseball's antitrust exemption is being used by these teams to line their own pockets. This is not surprising, but it sure as bell isn't a competitive market that should be exempt from labor laws. Walmart is often the target of SJWs, but Walmart states in green eyed envy of the special deal MLB and other sports leagues get. If I were king for a day, baseball's antitrust exemption would be eliminated and the ability of a group of rich players and their agents to form a "union" that did not include minor leaguers but bargained away their market power would similarly be canceled.
I'd love to see any one of the executives who have accounts here on SOSH drop by and try to justify their ability to pay less than minimum wage given the special treatment they get that already drives down wages substantially.
Thanks, P91.
I wish I had the foresight to include that $1k a month calculation. That's a phenomenal point.
Also, I appreciate the argument about the antitrust exemption. I was considering including it in the article, but I feel like that topic is so deep that it deserves its own article.
Why on earth would a Congressman from KY sponsor this bill? The Louisville Redbirds (Cardinals AAA) are vibrant and doing well and Louisville is not even in his district. He is from the bible belt (dry counties) so maybe Jesus doesn't like Minor League players.
To both of your points, I explain some reasons why in the article."Follow the money...."
Also, they're the Louisville Bats, a Triple-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. And, for what it's worth, Congressman Guthrie represents a district that includes the city of Bowling Green, which is home to a single-A team (also mentioned in the article.)
No idea if it's still accessible, but years back G38 posted some tremendous perspective into the minor league lifestyle, and what was necessary to survive financially.
oh boy, I am dating myself. When I came back to the US after Desert Storm I was stationed at Ft Knox at the Armor Academy. I remember stacks of free tickets were always available for RedBird's games. I have since only gone back to Louisville for the Derby a few times.
Adding that $1000/month would keep guys like Varvano and adding money for better meals and training facilities would reap great rewards in terms of better conditioned and prepared players.
Perhaps the next new thing will be having better fed and better trained minor leaguers?
Perhaps the next new thing will be having better fed and better trained minor leaguers?
Yet another point that could have its own article - not only are the salaries insufficient, but having a $25/day meal allowance for road games almost guarantees that players are not eating well.
A guy I work with made it up to High A in 1990 before his back gave out on him. He told me the teams tried to help out their players by giving them tickets that they could trade for food. He gave a cabby a full set of season tickets so that he would pick him up and drop him off at the park.
I don't think the anti-trust exemption is a big deal in this case. It's a big deal when talking about negotiations with the MLBPA and it's a deal when talking about the way MLB tries to manipulate favorable tax deals for stadiums, etc. with the threat of relocation. When talking about player salaries and particularly MiLB salaries, I just don't think it's even in the top 10 reasons. It's not like a licensing or regulatory restriction which requires a form of apprenticeship or internship (AKA near slave labor) to earn certification. At best the Anti-Trust exemption suppresses salaries only in a world where a competitive league could be formed. The barrier to entry is high in major sports and it's not because of the ATE. It's because people are willing to fill 35K+ stadiums at $30/ticket for MLB only. Even at AAA you are down to 10-12K stadiums, and average ticket price in the single digits ($7 was the most recent data I could find, but it was 2011). If you could create a competitive league what level do you think you would be? How will you attract players even making meager MiLB salaries to your league? How much can you pay? Again, the barrier to entry is higher than people credit.
Some things that have nothing to do with Congress that affect MiLB salaries
- People's willingness to pay for anything but MLB level baseball.
- People's willingness to pay more to see guys who are on the way to MLB (hence why there are no longer any unaffiliated minor league teams)
- The MLBPA's refusal to allow non-roster players into the union and therefore from any collective bargaining - even though the MLBPA *does* negotiate bonus structures for amateurs, and things like the rule 4 and rule 5 draft which affects minor leaguers ability to get into the majors.
- The reserve system meaning there is no meaningful competition for minor league players.
MLB does have a monopoly on MLB, and MLB pays the most money by far compared to any other league in the world, which is why most players opt to deal with the low salaries. This is a true free will/free market phenomenon. Not many play minor league baseball in for the minor league baseball salary. They are their to compete for the majors. In the same way that no interns go to an internship because they just want to pass the time and no medical residents are at the hospital because they just love working 70 hour weeks, etc.
Whether or not MiLB players should be subject to FLSA is a big question. What would constitute part of the work-week for a MiLB player? If they have to report for a 9 AM video session but then have noon-5 PM "off" is that a weird split-shift kind of deal? Etc. The point being, there is a lot of reason for FLSA not to apply to baseball players and it's not just salary restriction, so I think it's a pretty gross oversimplification to imply that the bill (whether you agree or not) is just about salaries.
Now, the next question is whether teams could benefit from paying more? That's a tough one, right? The reserve system means that minor leaguers don't get to choose where they want to play until they have accumulated enough service time that you have a generally good idea that the player is not a major league contributor. So to really have salaries make a difference you have to also get rid of the draft and the reserve clause. Therefore, there is no competitive advantage to offering more minor league pay either. (although one could argue that on the margins if you are willing to use your AAA team as a stashing place for fringe of roster players and you are willing to pay more you might get the best collection of AAAA players you can have).
I guess my problem with the pile on is this - it is easy to just express outrage but I don't think anyone bothers to look beyond the bare surface of what is going on. And in general I am one to think owners are a bunch of greedy jerks. And I agree with the idea of paying more but it's weird to me when guys who on every other subject are champions of the meritocracy look at this system and get upset.
Some things that have nothing to do with Congress that affect MiLB salaries
- People's willingness to pay for anything but MLB level baseball.
- People's willingness to pay more to see guys who are on the way to MLB (hence why there are no longer any unaffiliated minor league teams)
- The MLBPA's refusal to allow non-roster players into the union and therefore from any collective bargaining - even though the MLBPA *does* negotiate bonus structures for amateurs, and things like the rule 4 and rule 5 draft which affects minor leaguers ability to get into the majors.
- The reserve system meaning there is no meaningful competition for minor league players.
MLB does have a monopoly on MLB, and MLB pays the most money by far compared to any other league in the world, which is why most players opt to deal with the low salaries. This is a true free will/free market phenomenon. Not many play minor league baseball in for the minor league baseball salary. They are their to compete for the majors. In the same way that no interns go to an internship because they just want to pass the time and no medical residents are at the hospital because they just love working 70 hour weeks, etc.
Whether or not MiLB players should be subject to FLSA is a big question. What would constitute part of the work-week for a MiLB player? If they have to report for a 9 AM video session but then have noon-5 PM "off" is that a weird split-shift kind of deal? Etc. The point being, there is a lot of reason for FLSA not to apply to baseball players and it's not just salary restriction, so I think it's a pretty gross oversimplification to imply that the bill (whether you agree or not) is just about salaries.
Now, the next question is whether teams could benefit from paying more? That's a tough one, right? The reserve system means that minor leaguers don't get to choose where they want to play until they have accumulated enough service time that you have a generally good idea that the player is not a major league contributor. So to really have salaries make a difference you have to also get rid of the draft and the reserve clause. Therefore, there is no competitive advantage to offering more minor league pay either. (although one could argue that on the margins if you are willing to use your AAA team as a stashing place for fringe of roster players and you are willing to pay more you might get the best collection of AAAA players you can have).
I guess my problem with the pile on is this - it is easy to just express outrage but I don't think anyone bothers to look beyond the bare surface of what is going on. And in general I am one to think owners are a bunch of greedy jerks. And I agree with the idea of paying more but it's weird to me when guys who on every other subject are champions of the meritocracy look at this system and get upset.
(I'll preface this by saying that all numbers came from SoxProspects' excellent draft history page for each player drafted by the Red Sox.)
This is something I don't understand either, and it seems like such an obvious move, even more so in light of the changes to the draft several years ago. The Red Sox have always been a big market team that can (and should) use their financial resources to get a leg up. The draft rules changed prior to the 2012 draft to the current system, and since the change we spent (starting in 2012): 7.1 million, 6.2 million, 6.5 million, 6.5 million, and our cap + 5% is 7.4 million for this past 2016 draft (average over those years: 6.7 million).
In the years before the changes started, we spent (in descending chronological order from 2011 to 2005): 11 million, 10.4 million, 6.3 million, 9.6 million, 4.6 million, 8.4 million, 6.3 million (average from 2005-2011: 8.1 million). This also doesn't take into account the massive amounts that the Red Sox have dumped into international free agent signings over both of these periods, but the difference in money spent on the draft alone since before the changes would be enough to offset an extra 1 or 2 million in salaries across the entire farm system. As others have stated, I have a hard time imagining that this investment wouldn't pay for itself in terms of player development.
Next time educate yourself on what is in a bill before you co-sponsor it.
“@RepCheri: After hearing from you & learning more in the last 24 hours, I’ve immediately withdrawn my support from H.R. 5580: https://t.co/Oz0eg8g5dj
“@RepCheri: After hearing from you & learning more in the last 24 hours, I’ve immediately withdrawn my support from H.R. 5580: https://t.co/Oz0eg8g5dj
If they're not paying minor leaguers enough, then why are enough people choosing to play minor league baseball to field teams? Clearly the players believe they are being paid enough, or they would quit to find other jobs. No one's being forced to play minor league baseball.
Thus the question of whether the FLSA applies and the attempt to pass a law that would exempt MiLB from wage laws, just in case it is determined that those laws do apply.
Or antitrust laws, which might permit them to find "other jobs" as baseball players, just as a supermarket cashiesr can move from Shaw's to DeMoulas if the latter pays more, because there is no Supermarket League that sets cashiers' salaries.
The dot com touched on this last year.
http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/minor-league/minor-league-facility-makeovers-the-unexploited-advantage/
I think people don't understand the Anti-trust exemption at all, and clearly do not understand minor league roster rules at all.
the only thing the ATE does in relation to this discussion is to take away Anti-trust laws as an attack on the reserve clause (such as it exists). And, in fact, I doubt that the courts would ever allow a challenge this way - even if you remove ATE, would you want any player to be able to challenge if they are traded? You end up with all kinds of kooky results unless you make the market completely open and have trade clauses in every single contract. Maybe baseball would work better this way, I honestly don't know. But there seems to be a significant push to have competitive balance.
Basically you have more trouble with the reserve clause than the ATE.
the only thing the ATE does in relation to this discussion is to take away Anti-trust laws as an attack on the reserve clause (such as it exists). And, in fact, I doubt that the courts would ever allow a challenge this way - even if you remove ATE, would you want any player to be able to challenge if they are traded? You end up with all kinds of kooky results unless you make the market completely open and have trade clauses in every single contract. Maybe baseball would work better this way, I honestly don't know. But there seems to be a significant push to have competitive balance.
Basically you have more trouble with the reserve clause than the ATE.
Is this sarcasm? I can't tell. But there are plenty of reasons why this position is wrong and players play even though the pay sucks. As examples...
1. If you're a good enough ballplayer to get drafted, but not so highly that you get any kind of significant bonus, you don't have much choice. You play for that team and take that pay. It's not a very open system. Your alternatives (independent leagues) are few.
2. You love the game and realize you can't play it forever, so you play it when you can, for peanuts. That's a choice, but it does not mean that the players "clearly" believe they're getting paid enough.
3. Players are chasing the dream of fame and fortune in the bigs. Many chase it far longer than is rational, despite the crappy pay. Kind of like buying more lottery tickets as the jackpot increases, you get to high A and think, if I can just refine this pitch, or add a little power, etc. And you ignore or put up with the crappy pay, until you no longer can...
4. Players DO eventually quit, even talented ones, because they can't make it financially.
Etc.
To #1, while an option, the independent leagues don't actually represent a better paying option...at least affiliated minor league teams have MLB money to make whatever work, independent teams could be in a lot of trouble on this.
Worse yet, the relatively new draft system which winds up leaving more players in college for longer makes owning an indy team where you have to pay players a lot less attractive than owning a summer collegiate team where you get them for free (or even get them to pay YOU so they can play).
Worse yet, the relatively new draft system which winds up leaving more players in college for longer makes owning an indy team where you have to pay players a lot less attractive than owning a summer collegiate team where you get them for free (or even get them to pay YOU so they can play).
1. So don't play baseball. Choose a different career path.
2. If the love of playing the game is worth more than money for these players, who are you or I to say differently? Let them quit or go on strike if they don't like their pay.
3. How are we to impute the value of the players' potential future major league earnings? Because they most definitely have a value. Teams are investing expensive resources in minor league players. Those benefits should be considered in their total compensation when determining if they're being fairly paid.
4. This means the market is working. If teams valued the quitters more, they'd pay them more. Unless there's some kind of market inefficiency to be exploited, but I find it hard to believe that in this post-Moneyball era there could possibly be a very large one as simple as "pay minor league players more."
Emphasize the word potential. More than half of the guys on the team bus are just there to provide the actual future MLB players with realistic practice games.
Again compare this to any other business. Can Walmart and Target tell JC Penny that they can't open a new franchise in the same city as Walmart? Can Home Depo and Lowes collude to force Tru Value hardware not to recruit their top department managers and promote them to store manager? Can MS collude with IBM to force graduates of computer programming degrees to work for the company that claims their rights at age 18 for up to 12 years before they get another opportunity to choose a different employer in the computer industry? Would you allow Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus to dictate to electrical engineering grads where they work the first 10 years of their career? Hey, if they don't like it they don't have to be an electrical engineer right?
Your arguments make perfect sense in a competitive labor market. Walmart and Target can pay whatever they want to their cashiers, because a reliable cashier is free to leave for a better offer at the drop of a hat. As long as MLB wants all its special privileges, chief among them the right to unilaterally determine which teams are "major league" and which are "minor league," then they should t get the same power over employees that we give to firms subject to market forces.
Baseball teams are the epitome of crony capitalist monopolies. They should either give up that status or submit to heavy regulation.
Somewhere we need to consider the immigration related factors. The peanuts you get to play MiLB or Indy league seem low by North American standards, but it's a lot of money when you send it back to the Dominican Republic or Venezuela...
And just what makes a baseball team/league a monopoly? What barrier is there against competing leagues on today's enviornment besides the general acceptance of MLB as the "big league"? There was a USFL, why can't there be a USBL?
What besides having to compete with a really well built brand stops a competing entity from setting up its own baseball league?
And why is the antitrust exemption such a big deal in baseball, but NFL, NBA and NHL don't seem to need it?
What besides having to compete with a really well built brand stops a competing entity from setting up its own baseball league?
And why is the antitrust exemption such a big deal in baseball, but NFL, NBA and NHL don't seem to need it?
Given that they're documented employees working for American companies I'm not sure their country of origin has anything to do with anything. There's absolutely no reason not to hold the teams to minimum wage requirements, especially as the time and travel commitments mean there's no way for players to pick up regular second jobs like many people making minimum wage in the US are forced to do to survive.
Anyone who wants to can start their own baseball league, and pay its players more than what minor leaguers currently get paid. The internal structure of MLB is a monopoly, because a sports league kind of has to be run that way. But the sport itself is not a monopoly.
The fact that one does not exist makes it a monopoly.
Both you and TrotNIxon are referencing the doctrine of "effective competition". The doctrine is bullshit generally, and particularly so for a bunch of crony capitalists like the MLB owners. The barriers to entry into major league sports are way larger the the barriers to entry in, for instance, the 1890s oil industry, but nobody thinks Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly.
Take a publicly funded stadiums like Camden Yards and Nats Park. Suppose an ownership group came along and asked Baltimore and DC to use the stadium for half the summer. As publicly funded pig troughs, those stadiums should be available equally to anyone who pays the city the same rental rate as the O's and Nats. Would MLB assent to rescheduling the Orioles and Nats home games to accommodate the two new teams? Never. Huge barrier to entry if you get second choice of dates in prime locations, even though taxpayers funded the billionaire playgrounds.
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For better or worse in this country (I think for better, YMMV), there are laws in place that set a floor on wages. The point of this whole thing is that minor leaguers seem to be below that floor. There are hard-to-determine factors, like how many hours do they really work, etc., but that's what this boils down to. Along with the idea, as others have said, that unlike most other jobs in this country, they can't really "switch employers in their business" in search of better wages, like most of us might be able to.
I, too, thought it was sarcasm at first, or maybe you're trolling. But the implicit underpinnings of your posts suggest that you dont believe there should be a minimum wage, that "the market" should dictate wages 100% of the time, and that it's fine to pay people, for example, 50 cents an hour if there are people willing to work for that wage. Do I have that right?
I'm suggesting that simply looking at wages is not the correct way to determine if a minor league player is being fairly compensated. For most, if not all, minor leaguers, they're not there because they think it's a great job that's going to support a family someday. They're there because they think they have a chance at getting to the big leagues and the hundreds of thousands or millions they'll get then. What's the PV of that? It will vary from player to player, thus will be difficult if not impossible to accurately quantify. But it can't be ignored in the calculation of whether they're being fairly paid, and it renders the comparisons to Wal-Mart worthless.
Since the first word in the name of the bill is "Save", anyone who dislikes the save rule should be completely against the bill
How are those aspirations any different from a typical entry level manager trainee at WalMart or IBM or a newly minted assistant professor at Ohio State. The manager trainee hopes to be a multimillion dollar CEO, and the newly minted professor hopes to win a Nobel Prize. Does that mean The company or the university should get to pay them based on the expected value of making it to that position, while simultaneously preventing them from taking a better offer from a competing organization for upwards of 10 years?
One way to consider the difference is this: suppose a Jaanese team wanted to offer Andrew Benitendi a 5 year $70 million contract. Would be be free to take it? Now Suppose he was a prodigy in f/x trading working for JPMC and Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi wanted to give him a similar contract to be their head trader. Would he be free to take it?
Why should MLB and JPB get to sign collusive labor agreements that would be banned in any other industry? And simultaneous be exempt from basic labor laws? It's atrocious.
That's the reserve clause and has literally and I mean literally nothing to do with anti trust law.
What grants them the right is that if you want to play MLB you sign a contract that stipulates all of those conditions. Guess what often f/x prodigies have to sign contracts and non competes as well. Now, where you're right is that people often challenge their non competes and in baseball the Supreme Court has determined that anti trust law doesn't apply. Whether that actually makes a difference I'll leave to the lawyers. After all Curt Flood won his case, right?
What grants them the right is that if you want to play MLB you sign a contract that stipulates all of those conditions. Guess what often f/x prodigies have to sign contracts and non competes as well. Now, where you're right is that people often challenge their non competes and in baseball the Supreme Court has determined that anti trust law doesn't apply. Whether that actually makes a difference I'll leave to the lawyers. After all Curt Flood won his case, right?
It's the same reason you need to pay interns who do actual work. Getting a foot in the door is not a valid excuse to violate wage laws. It's not for 18 year olds who want t work in any other industry, and it's not for 18 year olds who want to be pro athletes.
You're right, a better comparison might be to the film and video industry. Nobody puts in the grueling hours for low or no pay as a production assistant or intern because that's what they want to do forever; they want to end up making a good living as producers or directors or whatever. Most of them don't. That's also an industry which has very much exploited young workers, but the industry trend there is toward better pay and working conditions, not lobbying congress to write further exploitation into law.
The collusion allowed by the anti-trust exemption is part of what has created the stays quo over time by preventing independent leagues from usurping the monopoly and competing for talent by not having a reserve clause though.
The other part is the hypocrisy of not including the minor league players in the union, but making their pay subject to union negotiations. There's no way an agreement between David Ortiz and John Henry should be allowed to affect Jason Groom's signing bonus. There is no way to call that a "competitive market outcome."
And if you're an industry that is going to blatantly collude to avoid market outcomes, then you'll get no quarter from me if the public decides to divvy up your rents differently from how you'd like to do it.
I guess the point is that they're content to take less pay than a US player - their dynamics and economics are different...and how long until someone speaks up and questions why they get work visas, especially when we're talking get about career minor leaguers and indy league players.
Basically, owners can use these foreign players and their willingness to accept low pay to keep pay low across the board...
This can all be researched very easily and I wish people would do it. In fact, I wish it so much that the next person who talks about the ATE in this thread without doing any basic research earns themselves a gods of BABIP suspension until the Red Sox win 3 consecutive games (ps congress passed the Curt Flood act in 1998 making MLB subject to anti-trust law for purposes of labor rights and negotiation...but this is largely irrelevant because the court ruled two years later that unionized employees can't file anti trust suits.)
Again, bringing up the ATE in this instance is a gigantic red herring.
Again, bringing up the ATE in this instance is a gigantic red herring.
I can't believe people are arguing the players don't deserve more. The teams are taking advantage of young guys dreaming of MLB. It is similar to an unethical college program selling kids on the chance to go pro and having them take useless classes so they can make all the workouts. FredNL mentioning it is good money for guys coming from squalor shows how shitty it really is.
I played in the lowest depths of minor league basketball and the money was comparable to milb from what I just read. I think AAA should get 50k. I know guys that play or played in the AHL and they make a decent living. Hockey guys know if they get to the AHL they can afford to keep playing. That is what baseball should be, make it to AAA and stay for a while. Below that give it 3 years or so as a young guy then move on.
I played in the lowest depths of minor league basketball and the money was comparable to milb from what I just read. I think AAA should get 50k. I know guys that play or played in the AHL and they make a decent living. Hockey guys know if they get to the AHL they can afford to keep playing. That is what baseball should be, make it to AAA and stay for a while. Below that give it 3 years or so as a young guy then move on.
I think that most of the guys who make it to minor league free agency and are good enough for AAA do get around $50k or maybe a little more.
The slot system and the gaming of that system obviously encourages this underpayment for minor league players and this could obviously be changed simply and quickly. The following would do that:
No team can ever gain more than 50% of the money assigned to the draft slot.
Then just require all teams to pay no less than minimum wage assuming 40 hrs/work per week during the 5/6 month season. MLB should be embarrassed that they aren't doing that already.
No team can ever gain more than 50% of the money assigned to the draft slot.
Then just require all teams to pay no less than minimum wage assuming 40 hrs/work per week during the 5/6 month season. MLB should be embarrassed that they aren't doing that already.
I've heard on the radio from former minor leaguers that the Redsox system is much better than some in what they provide for their players. Matt Spring (I think, the Catcher who was in our system a few years back) mentioned the stark difference between the Sox system and the Rays system. He went on to say that basically if you fail in Boston, it's on you because they provide everything necessary for you to succeed from nutritionist to trainers and if they didn't have it, you could request it. Whereas the Rays system, you were basically on your own unless you were a "legit" prospect. Of course, he could have just been praising his new team.
Anyway, I'm really surprised teams don't provide all the meals for their players throughout the course of the day, at the training facilities, pre game, post game, take home, etc. I'm also a bit surprised they just don't rent out a building for all their players to live in, with a hired cook. Of course, you could just pay them more but the benefits they do offer seem pretty shitty. I'm sure a guy like Rafael Devers has access to whatever he wants to, you'd hope the same is the case for Nick Longhi or even Jordan Betts. If you have the right pieces in place, maybe you can teach and motivate a 21 year old Pablo to eat healthy. Instead, in the current system, he gets $25. Dunkins for breakfast, McDonalds for lunch, Burger King for supper.
In the long run, it seems like it would be worth it to throw these players another $1000 a month and offer a better food plan. How many Daniel Nava and Aaron Wilkerson type players stop chasing their dreams because they weren't bonus babies and couldn't live off the meager wages? You pay an extra 2mil a year to pay all your minor leaguers an extra 1k a month for 5 years, and if you get one Daniel Nava out of it, you've pretty much doubled or even tripled your investment. I don't see why they wouldn't do it just to avoid the negative press.
Anyway, I'm really surprised teams don't provide all the meals for their players throughout the course of the day, at the training facilities, pre game, post game, take home, etc. I'm also a bit surprised they just don't rent out a building for all their players to live in, with a hired cook. Of course, you could just pay them more but the benefits they do offer seem pretty shitty. I'm sure a guy like Rafael Devers has access to whatever he wants to, you'd hope the same is the case for Nick Longhi or even Jordan Betts. If you have the right pieces in place, maybe you can teach and motivate a 21 year old Pablo to eat healthy. Instead, in the current system, he gets $25. Dunkins for breakfast, McDonalds for lunch, Burger King for supper.
In the long run, it seems like it would be worth it to throw these players another $1000 a month and offer a better food plan. How many Daniel Nava and Aaron Wilkerson type players stop chasing their dreams because they weren't bonus babies and couldn't live off the meager wages? You pay an extra 2mil a year to pay all your minor leaguers an extra 1k a month for 5 years, and if you get one Daniel Nava out of it, you've pretty much doubled or even tripled your investment. I don't see why they wouldn't do it just to avoid the negative press.
When they are up for FA, they either get placed on the 40 man and receive a $100,000 retention bonus or are released and don't see any of it. I think most AAA guys make pretty decent money though, and there are usually major league guys on the roster picking up the expenses. In Pawtaucket alone, of the 28 positional players who have played this season, 19 have major league experience. Really, AAA guys are pretty well compensated, it's the lower levels where they aren't.
Here's my question though and I should probably know this. Is Deven Marrero still getting paid like a Major Leaguer because he played this year or is it just during his time up? Or was he already getting paid the major league minimum because he played last year? I know he gets benefits for life now, just not sure how the contracts work. Big difference between $500,000/year and $2200/month
The thing with hockey is that there's a point where you have decide if you're following the dream, or go get paid. AHL Pays fine either way, but if you're ECHL level you have to pick playing ECHL for less money, but with a chance for promotion or going to Europe where generally the pay is better, but the level of play and chance for advancement are less.
The other thing to consider is that if you're interested in a career in any sort of baseball coaching/instruction having a few years of professional baseball on your resume (and if you're not an asshole, the corresponding network of former team mates, opponents and coaches) makes a big difference, even if it's indy league...and there's some very good money to be made in the youth/tournament/travel/showcase baseball industry these days.