LOYAL AG said:

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94chem said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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94chem said:

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The one difference from a normal job is that the team owns the player. I don't know for how long, or what the rules are. Maybe someone can help. But why not just offer every minor leaguer making less than $50K and/or not on the 40 man either free agency or a retention bonus?

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Why spend that money? If you aren't struggling the fill the roster right now why spend money you don't have to? More money isn't going to make the players on the roster more talented.

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Right. If my company owned me, I'm sure they'd feel the same way.

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They do own you if there's 1000 other people that would put their lives on hold for a few years to pursue the dream you're living. If you're in a position where replacing you is expensive or you can improve your life elsewhere then you have some leverage and can demand more money. Neither of those apply to minor league baseball. Like I said earlier in the thread this isn't meant to be a career. The minors are there to give guys a chance to prove themselves. The 10% or less that do make tens of millions of dollars, the rest move on to the real world where they can ascend to jobs like yours that provide more leverage which ultimately leads to a higher quality of life. You cannot equate their situation to yours, they're in no way comparable.

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So, if I'm a single A player making $10,000/year, and the team wants to promote me to AA and pay me $20,000/year, I can just tell them no - I have an offer for $30,000/year with another AA organization that has a better pipeline to the Majors. I could do that. Right? Right??

I've never understood why there are so many levels of minor league baseball. How many levels of "A" are there exactly? I mean, effectively you have only 2 REAL levels of amateur ball -- HS and college. In my day, we had kids develop into college, possibly pro level, talent by playing their first game as a freshman in HS. That's less likely today, I guess, but still not impossible for the right player. So maybe you'd add a 3rd level of travel/select (pre/during HS), but you'd still have far fewer levels than MiLB.

Why does it take more than 2 or 3 levels to either a) teach a player to play pro ball or b) determine if he can play at a MLB level?

carl spacklers hat said:

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Maroon Elephant said:

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Soon there will be fewer guys willing to pass up big college NIL money (and college life) to go play A ball at waitress wages. Hope MLB realizes they need to raise those salaries by 50% just to keep the product relevant. Nobody is watching g as it is now.

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What percentage of A ball players make it to the Bigs? Throwing more money at the Minor Leagues isn't going to get more players to the show, it'll just cost the owners more money. If nobody is watching as it is now, how exactly is higher wages going to fix that?

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LOYAL AG said:

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94chem said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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94chem said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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94chem said:

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The one difference from a normal job is that the team owns the player. I don't know for how long, or what the rules are. Maybe someone can help. But why not just offer every minor leaguer making less than $50K and/or not on the 40 man either free agency or a retention bonus?

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Why spend that money? If you aren't struggling the fill the roster right now why spend money you don't have to? More money isn't going to make the players on the roster more talented.

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Right. If my company owned me, I'm sure they'd feel the same way.

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They do own you if there's 1000 other people that would put their lives on hold for a few years to pursue the dream you're living. If you're in a position where replacing you is expensive or you can improve your life elsewhere then you have some leverage and can demand more money. Neither of those apply to minor league baseball. Like I said earlier in the thread this isn't meant to be a career. The minors are there to give guys a chance to prove themselves. The 10% or less that do make tens of millions of dollars, the rest move on to the real world where they can ascend to jobs like yours that provide more leverage which ultimately leads to a higher quality of life. You cannot equate their situation to yours, they're in no way comparable.

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So, if I'm a single A player making $10,000/year, and the team wants to promote me to AA and pay me $20,000/year, I can just tell them no - I have an offer for $30,000/year with another AA organization that has a better pipeline to the Majors. I could do that. Right? Right??

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I don't know what your point is here but you seem to be missing the big picture entirely. This isn't a career and it's in no way comparable to your career or mine. You can change jobs tomorrow for more money and I can take on a new client at anytime. That's supply and demand at work. Minor league players are contractually obligated to their organization just like their major league peers are. Is that wrong? Maybe but that's how all professional sports are run so why would this be different? You're chasing a dream that countless men your age wish they could chase. That's the only point, everything else is irrelevant. Suspend your life for a few years and chase your big league dreams, that's awesome and I hope like hell you make it. But don't spend 10 years in the minors then whine because you haven't earned any money and your friends from HS and college have left you way behind. You made that decision knowing the risks. It's an indisputable fact that MLB has committed the amount of money to minors that they are willing to commit. Whether we divide that by 1000 players or 100 is wholly irrelevant. All you're doing by raising salaries is making the number of players and teams smaller which ultimately hurts everyone.

Chase your dream and if you come up short get on with your life. Welcome to the real world.

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But enough about graduate school...

Google "unpaid internships." Minor league baseball players are not as bad off as you seem to think.

My understand is a lot of the minor league guys are not allowed to (or really can't ) get off season jobs. The club owns them and can require them to be at their training faculty in a moments notice.

And no. $36k is not a great living wage. Could you survive on it - sure if you have multiple roommates, no car and eat ramen

MAROON said:

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My understand is a lot of the minor league guys are not allowed to (or really can't ) get off season jobs. The club owns them and can require them to be at their training faculty in a moments notice.

And no. $36k is not a great living wage. Could you survive on it - sure if you have multiple roommates, no car and eat ramen

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Or…your club could close due to not being profitable and you're standing near the Home Depot with the other guys looking for at best modestly skilled labor…

If the goal is to identify and groom the best potential, it would seem very unbeneficial to the club to pay so low they put players in the position of choosing between bettering themselves as an athlete or getting a real job.

Nothing is stopping the clubs from cutting guys that aren't worth it and just hanging around.

This is more of "that's the way it's always been" instead of "Is this how it should be?"

Interesting time to gaslight the plight of minor leaguers. For the first time ever their housing expense must now be covered by the clubs. That was the single biggest financial hurdle in the past and its gone. They went from needing to sacrifice comfort to squeeze four+ players in a dump to having more pocket change to eat properly.

Our culture opened the door for players to complain. The ones that don't, realize it's really not hard to replace them with players that would gladly take their spot for free. Data, video, and analytics allows the clubs to have fewer affiliates. Keep complaining and they'll keep reducing the number of available jobs.

AgLA06 said:

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If the goal is to identify and groom the best potential, it would seem very unbeneficial to the club to pay so low they put players in the position of choosing between bettering themselves as an athlete or getting a real job.

Nothing is stopping the clubs from cutting guys that aren't worth it and just hanging around.

This is more of "that's the way it's always been" instead of "Is this how it should be?"

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You seem to be confusing pro athletes with laborers that are high in supply. And you're overestimating what players with potential have as options in the labor force. Not because they couldn't do other things with time and focus, but because 95% of them haven't really considered preparing themselves for something else (and very few have a completed degree). The ones with only one eye on the prize have no chance of making it.

It wasn't that long ago that major league players had to take jobs in the off-season. I read " Boys of Summer" a few years ago. It was about one of the Brooklyn Dodger's seasons in the mid-50s. I was surprised by how many of their players, including some names you would recognize, had to hold down second jobs.

Because our priorities weren't so skewed back then. The Sports Entertainment Industry was still young, and developing, and there weren't billions of dollars in it. Same thing happened with NFL players, too, and probably NBA players. It is a relatively new phenomenon that professional athletes are paid exorbitant (unsustainable??) wages.

carl spacklers hat said:

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Because our priorities weren't so skewed back then. The Sports Entertainment Industry was still young, and developing, and there weren't billions of dollars in it. Same thing happened with NFL players, too, and probably NBA players. It is a relatively new phenomenon that professional athletes are paid exorbitant (unsustainable??) wages.

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It's not about priorities. It's about revenue.

In the 1950s, people were poorer than they are now, across the board, so sports didn't generate nearly the amount of revenue that they do now. While there is a constant battle between the owners and the players as to how to split the profits, so long as people buy tickets, and advertisers buy time on their broadcasts, players are going to get paid a lot of money.

Probably a part of it. People still sold out stadiums to see games back then so it wasn't necessarily the money, but access. You were limited to going to the game if local or listening by radio locally. There wasn't regional access by TV, radio, computers, etc. to be able to hear / watch every game.

More exposure means greater interest, more fans, more eyes / ears, which led to exponentially more broadcast / advertising money. That get's split between the players and owners. Matter fact, I just looked. While there are more people and not proportionally more seats available, the cheap seats were $1.25 in 1950 and $15 today. That's almost exactly equal with non-2022 inflation.

Revenue from ticket sales and stadium concessions are probably pretty similar to back then all things considering.

LOYAL AG said:

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It's not meant to be livable. It's meant to keep you hungry and fighting for a spot in the show. MiLB isn't a career it's a chance to prove yourself. A livable wage keeps guys around way longer than they should with no benefit to the organization funding It. Why is this a conversation?

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Just imagine how little the minor league softball players get paid

I'm thinking from a business standpoint you would think if you provided a better wage (say like 40k A level, 60k AA level and 70k AAA level) you could get better production out of your players because they can focus on baseball and not a 2nd job to pay the bills

pointer74 said:

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I'm thinking from a business standpoint you would think if you provided a better wage (say like 40k A level, 60k AA level and 70k AAA level) you could get better production out of your players because they can focus on baseball and not a 2nd job to pay the bills

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That might lead to some improvement in some fringe big leaguers. What they know is the real ones that stay there a long time have tools that you can't teach. They can perform under the old wage scale.

A small percentage of minor leaguers will ever become big league contributors. They're never going to pay organizational players like you suggest above. They're there to make complete rosters so the future big leaguers have teams to play for on their way up.

Except at this point it's basically become who comes from money or is used to living destitute (See south American players).

I used to play with some really talented guys that walked away to at least make a teacher's salary because they were stuck behind a top pick or an allstar ahead of them. Or after a couple years had burned through all their signing bonus and savings to get to double or triple A and there just wasn't enough money to pay the bills and keep playing. This isn't just low rated guys, but guys on some of the organizations top prospect lists that over produced compared to their draft status.

Add into that the less than college level of health care, training facilities, complete lack of meals for suitable athletes, etc. and I find it really hard to believe someone who's been involved in this thinks it's in anyone's best interests as it stands. It isn't necessarily what works, but what works good enough because free agency has made it much less important to have a viable farm system for many teams.

That isn't helping baseball overall.

I'm not saying pay the farm system like big leaguers. At some point if you're expecting people to develop into a product that makes you billions of dollars the last thing you want to do is run off a future all-star because they can make a better living as an entry level teacher.

pointer74 said:

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I'm thinking from a business standpoint you would think if you provided a better wage (say like 40k A level, 60k AA level and 70k AAA level) you could get better production out of your players because they can focus on baseball and not a 2nd job to pay the bills

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The flip side is profitability. The recent reorg of the minor leagues was to simplify go to market strategies. In almost all cases the MLB owns the team IP and licenses it to the stadium operator to used for specific uses to market games to the public. They then further market other services and events but cannot use (in most cases) the MiLB-specific IP for that marketing.

As with any franchise arrangement, there are forms of revenue obligations to maintain use of the brand. And the local "owner" has to balance revenue vs. "investment".

It's not simple.