While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Category: Management Bullshit
Unlock with PatreonThe Dodgers define themselves as successful for private reasons they won’t share with you
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Senne v. MLB wins another court victory
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It’s taken years, as these things do, but the lawsuit Senne v. MLB has been picking up wins of late. In August of last year, Senne v. MLB — full name Aaron Senne et al. v. Kansas City Royals Baseball Corp — was granted class action status, allowing players to collectively seek unpaid wages for their time playing in Minor League Baseball. As we’ve covered in this space before, minor-league players are not paid for spring training, nor for the postseason, as they are paid just during the regular season, meaning low-level players are pulling in around $1,100 per month for less than half of the year. And, thanks to Congress, they aren’t eligible for overtime despite putting in well over 40 hours per week in the season, plus whatever offseason work needs to be performed in order to thrive in-season.
Now, there’s another W to stack on top of the transition to class action status, as the Ninth Circuit court denied MLB’s appeal over that status: that means the Supreme Court is the only place left to appeal to if MLB wants to avoid going to trial.
The year in creating baseball coverage, featuring leftism
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
MiLB players speak on MLB’s idea of “waste”
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Part of Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball’s plan to shrink the minor leagues revolves around the concept of “waste.” Per a report by Bill Madden, “waste” was an important reason to agree to this plan to disaffiliate 42 minor-league teams: you can see my reaction to that reveal as well, as it published here in mid-November. This time around, though, the focus is on what minor-league players think of this idea, that any player who doesn’t make it to the bigs was a “waste” of resources for MLB teams.
I spoke with three players — two former, one active but anonymous to protect them from any blowback from MLB — for a feature that published at TalkPoverty earlier this month, titled “Major League Baseball Wants to Crush 42 Minor League Teams — And Their Hometowns.” I asked them a wider range of questions than what was used in that one piece, however, including on the subject of “waste.”
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50 years ago today, Curt Flood challenged MLB’s reserve clause
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On December 24, 1969, Curt Flood sent a letter to then-MLB commissioner, Bowie Kuhn. The letter was to let Kuhn know that Flood did not believe he could be traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, that the rights the Cardinals had over Flood — rights he had agreed to by signing with them — should not immediately transfer over to the Phillies, a team he did not agree to play or relocate for.
It was the start of something significant, and also, in essence, the end for Flood in Major League Baseball. He knew that going in, though, knew that by sending this letter to Kuhn, and later fighting MLB in the courts over his right to free agency, that even if he won, he had lost something. Flood knew all of that — executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association Marvin Miller made sure, repeatedly, that Flood knew the score in this regard, and wrote at length about that in his memoir — and yet, he sent the letter and challenged MLB in the courts, anyway. We don’t talk about Curt Flood enough, you know.
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MLB’s 2019 luxury tax reports are in, depressing
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
The battle between MLB and MiLB is just beginning
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Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball met at the winter meetings to continue negotiations on a new Professional Baseball Agreement — the governing document for the relationship between MLB and MiLB — and those talks were not promising. If anything, everything surrounding MLB’s plan to disaffiliate 42 teams is somehow worse than it was before the latest talks, as the two sides brought a somewhat-public discussion fully into the public, and spent the end of the week sniping back and forth. This was ugly, and it’s only getting uglier.
MLB is protective of their plan, and, as Michael Silverman put it for The Boston Globe, fired back at Minor League Baseball owners for letting the public know that MLB’s plan to devastate dozens of communities with a connection to pro baseball and gut thousands of jobs is extremely unfair, poorly thought out, and is an excellent summation of the level of greed that’s currently in favor among MLB owners. MiLB then responded to this by going point-by-point on MLB’s plan, including tearing the “Dream League” idea to shreds by saying it’s completely nonviable both for affected MiLB owners and the smaller communities many of these disaffiliated teams hail from.
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Gerrit Cole signed, but nothing about MLB is fixed yet
While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
Marvin Miller is in the Hall of Fame… now what?
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Marvin Miller was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, an incredibly overdue honor for the one of the single most-important figures in the history of the sport. On the other hand, it’s not what the first-ever executive director of the MLB Players Association wanted: before his death, he had asked to be removed from the ballot, but his request was ignored. Per Murray Chass, here’s what Miller wrote to Jack O’Connell, the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America, in 2008:
“Paradoxically, I’m writing to thank you and your associates for your part in nominating me for Hall of Fame consideration, and, at the same time, to ask that you not do this again,” Miller wrote to Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Miller added: “The antiunion bias of the powers who control the Hall has consistently prevented recognition of the historic significance of the changes to baseball brought about by collective bargaining. As former executive director (retired since 1983) of the players’ union that negotiated these changes, I find myself unwilling to contemplate one more rigged veterans committee whose members are handpicked to reach a particular outcome while offering the pretense of a democratic vote. It is an insult to baseball fans, historians, sports writers and especially to those baseball players who sacrificed and brought the game into the 21st century. At the age of 91, I can do without farce.”
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