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Category: MiLB
Unlock with PatreonRob Manfred declares war on the MLBPA
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For decades, MLB’s owners, regardless of who actually comprised that group, attempted again and again to break the union: they failed, and eventually developed more subtle measures to combat the MLB Players Association. Those plans, supported by unity among the owners despite their various differences, has helped lead us to where we are today, with the MLBPA once again fighting from well underneath as they try to even things up with the bosses.
Over the last two years, much of what I’ve written on MLB’s labor issues has been coming from the assumption that the owners were planning on eventually, once again, declaring open war on the Players Association. We might have seen the first salvo, even, thanks to a report from Craig Calcattera at NBC’s Hardball Talk. MLB and the MLBPA are already discussing changes to the collective bargaining agreement, over two years from the expiration of the current one, and in one of those talks, Manfred reportedly told the PA that there is “not going to be a deal where we pay you in economics to get labor peace.” Since the entire point of opening up the discussions early was economic in nature, and, 50 years in, the major sticking points of the CBA are going to be economically based as the nature of the game’s economics and revenue streams continue to evolve and grow, this is a real problem for anyone who harbored optimism about these and the coming CBA talks.
Congress sends letter to MLB over MiLB disaffiliating, but what does it mean?
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
MLB thinks paying MiLB players is a “waste”
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We now know the identity of the 42 minor-league teams MLB plans to shut down as part of a major restructuring of Minor League Baseball. The New York Times published the list this weekend, and there are some threads to pull on within it that reveal some of MLB’s intent: we’ll focus on the idea of “waste” today.
Just 14 of the shuttered teams are full-season, out of 120 that exist right now. However, 28 of the 40 short-season teams out there would be disaffiliated: those are inherently lower on the attendance spectrum, considering they are short-season leagues, in smaller parks, often in smaller cities that maybe couldn’t support something the size and scope of a Triple-A team and its park. That doesn’t mean they failed to, say, pay for the stadium they do have to be built, or that the people within those cities aren’t enjoying having a team in town. As Neil deMause writes:
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Kris Bryant’s service time grievance is under review, and it has huge implications
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MLB threatens to shut down MiLB teams, and they aren’t bluffing. Just greedy.
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If you’ve been paying attention, you knew this was coming: MLB is finally threatening to shut down a number of Minor League Baseball teams, because overhauling stadiums, clubhouses, equipment, and paying players costs money they do not want to spend. They have the money, of course, being a $10 billion per year industry, but MLB’s owners would prefer that MiLB’s owners pick up the tab instead: that way, MLB can modernize the minors and improve pay for minor-league players, but not at their own expense. So, more of the same from them, really.
This conversation is happening because the Professional Baseball Agreement between MLB and MiLB is close to expiring: the 2020 season is the last that will be played under the current agreement. With horrid minor-league pay a more public concern than it’s ever been following MLB’s lobbying of Congress to restrict it, MLB has tried to public relations their way into being in favor of better pay for those players despite all of the evidence to the contrary. While teams could just, you know, do that — paying every single minor-league player in an organization $50,000 per year instead of poverty-level wages would cost every MLB team something like $7.5 million annually — they are instead now threatening MiLB’s owners to do more of the spending in the future, or else be cut out of this joint product.
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Randy Dobnak, Uber driver, is a symptom of a larger MLB problem
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The Twins were swept out of the postseason by the Yankees, but not before pitcher Randy Dobnak could make an appearance. Dobnak, a rookie right-hander, appeared in nine regular season games, including five starts, and pitched brilliantly in the process. The 24-year-old wasn’t a top prospect in the organization entering the year, but thrived across three levels in 2019, anyway, and then there he was, starting an American League Division Series game against the Yankees. You’re not a true Twin until you lose to the Yankees in the postseason, you know: it’s a huge honor.
For Dobnak, it was the end of a long journey, one which saw him sign with the Twins as an undrafted free agent in 2017 after pitching in independent ball. Dobnak received a $2,000 bonus, and… that was it. After that, he was fully subject to the poverty-level wages of Minor League Baseball, wages which caused him to drive an Uber around this past spring in Fort Myers, spring training home of the Twins. Dobnak was actually working as an Uber driver in between games in the spring: someone had to pay him, and minor-league players don’t get paid during spring training, even if they’re taking part in it.
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September call-ups, MLB pensions, rule changes, and MiLB exploitation
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“What if MLB’s efficiency fetish could further infect the minors,” asks writer.
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On Monday, Travis Sawchik asked a question to Five Thirty Eight’s audience: “Do we even need Minor League Baseball?” Sawchik’s theory is that so much of player development happens off the field these days, in comparison to how development used to work, that the minors are a waste of time and resources. Sawchik, you might recall, is one of the two authors of The MVP Machine, which looked at how players can kind of just be created these days thanks to advances in analytics and the introduction of the concept of “Betterball,” so this is an arena he knows his way around.
To a point, anyway. As you might also recall, the book brings to mind some key questions regarding labor and homogeneity it does not know the answers to (or even how to answer them), and this article is something of an extension of that. Deadspin’s Albert Burneko, for instance, wants to know who the “we” in Sawchik’s headline refers to, and it’s not an exaggeration that the entire premise of Sawchik’s piece relies on the reader identifying with management in order for it to accomplish the job the author set out for it.
You should read all of Burneko’s piece, as it’s fan-centric and a rebuttal to the idea presented in the initial piece that MiLB exists in the service of MLB teams alone, but I’ll pull this paragraph from it for now:
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The current NLRB is useless, unless you’re an employer like MLB
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