The minor league system is wack. Which sucks, cause I really like minor league baseball. I think it's really cool because the guys that play are really into the game and really into bettering themselves as players in an attempt to make it to the top, even though the system isn't built to help them get to the majors and it's to get them out of baseball entirely. Personally, I have two major discrepancies and one minor discrepancy with how the Major League Baseball office treats the Minor League clubs and their players.
The MLB commissioner, Robert Manfred, came out and said that he wanted to cut ties with 42 Minor League Baseball (MiLB) teams and that's dumb. Let it be known, I think that's straight up stupid. One of the teams on the list was the Quad City River Bandits, they are one of the Astros single-A teams out in Iowa. If they cut this team, then anyone that has ever worked for the River Bandits, they'll be jobless. Most of these small towns that have a minor league team, especially as you move further north, are centered around this team and it's less about "these guys might play for the Astros!" or whatever their affiliate may be and more about "these boys are our boys." People that live in these towns aren't always fans of the big league club associated with the team, they're fans of the team they have in front of them. It's like if the MLB decided to take away the Texas Rangers, just dissolve the team, not relocate them to Austin or something just to take them out of Arlington. No, I mean boom. Texas Rangers, gone. That would suck for everybody. So taking away a minor league team does the same thing, but not on such a massive scale.
My second issue is how they pay the minor leaguers. They get paid so little and they're doing so much work! In 2018 the MLB brought in $10.3 billion worth of revenue and that's a lot of money. Like I can't even fathom how much money that is, but that's a lot of money. Every minor leaguer is paid by their major league club so the Astros then pay for everyone on the Round Rock Express (AAA), Corpus Christi Hooks (AA), Fayetteville Woodpeckers (High A), Quad City River Bandits (A), Tri-City ValleyCats (SS), and the DSL & GCL Rookie teams. So they're paying for a grand total of eight teams. Most of these guys are making around $1160 a month over six and a half months. That's not a lot of money. Honestly, that's so underpaid to the point that most of these guys are living off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and are bunking with four or five other guys in a two bedroom apartment that way they can cut costs wherever they can. And unless they get another job in the offseason they're not going to get paid during the offseason, nor will they get paid during spring training, so it doesn't work, it doesn't make sense, and it's not fair because these guys are signed and playing as elite athletes. They might only be in the minors but they are professional players and they have been since they put the pen to the paper when they got drafted. Yet they're getting paid worse than the hot dog guys walking around the stands at the baseball games. Plus, they don't get paid overtime but they're expected to stay in shape and they're expected to keep it all together and the guys in charge expect these prospects to work while continuing to stay in shape, better themselves, and perfect their craft in order to move towards the next season, but they aren't getting paid which sets them back and causes them to not improve over the offseason because they're focused on putting food on the table or making sure the lights stay on during the offseason. The MLB is able to get away with this because they are exempt from most minimum wage and overtime pay protections because of the Save America's Pastime Act which exempted them from the the Fair Labor Standards Act which said as long as the ball players are getting paid the equivalent of federal minimum at $7.25 an hour for a 40-hour work week it worked out to around that $1160 a month, but the problem is these guys are putting in upwards of 70 hours a week so it really comes down to about $3 an hour, so they're getting paid almost half of what they should be. The MLB is saying that they can't pay minor leaguers because it would put them in a financial disposition, but if you're bringing in $10.3 billion worth of revenue, you've got the money my guy. You've got the money. Put the money where your mouth is, but whatever. The other thing the MLB's pushing is having the MiLB players get a job in the offseason. I played softball in high school, but around Christmas time, I didn't have a lot of money, but I needed to get my dad something for Christmas. I can't pick up a job if I'm at school for 40 hours a week, and then have softball practice after school, and travel practice after that. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to do all of those things without ultimately suffering somewhere. That's not how that works, or well that's not how it should work. But what do I know, I guess. For the MiLB it's more like "oh it's the offseason and you want money? Maybe you should get a job! But also don't forget to stay in shape because we're going to want you next year! Also, don't forget to try and make it to a field or cages a couple time a week because you want to stay sharp!" The MLB has also stated that they're not daily workers, and equate them to that of a struggling actor in Hollywood or New York where they're trying to land a show of some sort. They don't get paid until they get the part on said show, but they still put in their time, energy, and money into it to earn their keep. That's a choice, versus being offered to play for a major league ball club, since they are now employed by the ball club, but the league makes the argument that they aren't employed by the ball club because they are that of a struggling actor looking for their big break? That one really frustrates me, like that doesn't compute because they are daily workers. They come to the clubhouse every damn day to train, improve, and play this game. There are so many guys that end up signing and will play for five or six years and decide it's not worth it anymore because they can't support themselves, or they're starting to fall to alcohol dependency or drugs, or they want to start a family and need to be able to have some financial netting. It's sort of similar to the NCAA thing, with all these student-athletes that bring in so much revenue, they should be able to benefit from it, that makes sense. They should be able to benefit from the money they bring in, and most of these minor league teams bring in a fair amount of money if you think about it. The area that has the team, that community supports the team, because they're the hometown heros, on top of that they will have fans from the major league affiliate because they know that these guys in their farm teams are their future. They just don't get any of that money. There was a former minor leaguer that said you can pay these guys for a 12 month season at minimum wage, multiply that by about 200 minor leaguers per MLB team and you're only raising your payroll by $4.5 million, which is about what you would pay a mediocre free agent relief pitcher. The thought process, it seems like it would be so logical that you would just raise the salary of 200 guys instead of getting one mediocre reliever.
Then there's the rookie payment problem. If you're a rookie and you don't start the season until maybe a month in, you'll retain your rookie status for an extra year. Sometimes that's a good thing, but this rookie is now playing in the MLB but still getting paid that pathetic minor league salary. The Astros have done this twice that I can remember. They brought up George Springer the day after rookie status gets maintained and he stayed with the Astros for the entire season. He's played at this all-star level since his rookie year, and basically has a whole year of service time that he never got paid for. They also did this with Kyle Tucker, he's played parts of two different seasons but just lost rookie status after the 2019 season and really only lost rookie status by one at bat, since MLB rules state that you lose rookie status after 130 at-bats and on the last day of the season Tucker took his 131st at bat. With this being said, Tucker still could've started 2020 as a rookie, if he hadn't taken that final at bat. The biggest of these in recent history has been Kris Bryant with the Cubs, they didn't pay him for a whole year the major salary because they called him up and sent him back down to triple-A and then recalled him the day after the deadline, which allowed him to have minor league pay and retain rookie status into 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series. This seems to be the case that's really been getting to the MLB, so maybe they're thinking about changing that rule.
What really gets me though, is the fact that not paying their developmental leagues is solely a baseball problem. In the NBA, players in the G-league are getting paid roughly $35,000 a year. Which, granted, still isn't a lot, but it's much more livable that $7,000 a year, and they get whatever the NBA has listed as benefits for the players. Then in the NHL they have two leagues, the higher league, which is the AHL and the lower league, which is the ECHL. In the AHL players are making $47,500 plus playoff bonuses, as well as moving expenses at the beginning and the end of the season. So these people that have to uproot their lives to play for this team, they have those costs subsidized. Then in the ECHL, closer to their rookie league, guys are making $460 a week, but at the same time that's about $680 more per month than the MLB minor league system. I think what causes the raise in salary for the NBA and the NHL is the fact that these guys can go overseas and play in Europe and Asia if they wanted to do that instead, but you can't really do that with baseball because all of these guys that do go and play in Japan and Korea for a few years and then try to come back and play in the States, usually end up not performing nearly as well because we've built a caliber of baseball that is nearly impossible to recreate. It frustrates me to a different level sometimes.
Kommentare