Minor league baseball pay large issue

This week, Major League Baseball begins its 2019 season with the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics traveling to Tokyo to play a pair of games. With the major league season this close to starting and the minor league season just 17 days away from beginning, two articles from Emily Waldon at The Athletic (subscription required) and former player Dirk Hayhurst on his personal blog are a bit in danger in being missed in the excitement for the upcoming season.

They shouldn’t be. They should be required reading – not just for fans of the game, but also for those who sit in New York in league offices along with those who sit in team offices throughout the league, attempting to discuss their team’s finances while at the same time driving a significant portion of the game’s participants into poverty.

This is the time of year that it’s the worst. We argue among fanbases on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and all sorts of forums throughout the interwebs over which minor league non-roster invite could make the biggest impact this spring. Funny thing is, those non-roster invites that you’re paying to watch? They’re paying their way to the game just like you are.

Minor league players who are not part of the 40-man roster are not compensated for spring training, but, of course, they are required to be present for team workouts and games that would make holding down a job that would allow them to earn any income impossible. For those players who are not on a full-season roster as of April 4th (minor league opening day), those same conditions exist. Non-40-man roster players receive no monetary compensation for their time in spring training.

They must make it up in the regular season then, right?

Hardly.

First, Emily did a tremendous job exploring the full-season pay issue, which is still incredible, but I wanted to consider that the short-season Opening Day for those who don’t make a full-season roster out of spring training is June 14. The last team to have pitchers and catchers report this spring was the Atlanta Braves, who reported February 16th. No other team even had a February 15th report date, so outside of the Braves, all teams had their pitchers and catchers reporting between February 11-14. While it’s rare that a pitcher would be a non-roster invite the team expected to be present on February 14 and then be assigned to short-season ball, it’s quite feasible that many players came on their own determination by Valentine’s Day that will not be assigned a roster until June 14th.

That is 4 months of training and spending every day at the team facility. Four months without being monetarily compensated. Sure, there’s meal money, but that’s sure not much – $20-30 per day in most cases, plus anything provided at the facilities. Considering that’s the ONLY pay the players receive, we’re asking those players to live on roughly $2,400-3,600 of meal money total for 4 months while requiring workouts and time at the facility such that there’s no way the player could hold a job during that time to earn income.

That player would then earn roughly $1,000 – $1,200 per month as a member of a short-season team for 2.5 months, perhaps 3 if the player is lucky enough to be on a short-season team that goes all the way to the championship. That leaves our player with $2,500-$3,600 in monetary pay for the season.

Then they get to go home and can make some “real money” though, right?

Not quite. A player in short-season ball very likely would receive an invite to fall instructs, another unpaid, meal money-only event that is supposed to help the player have a chance to improve his stock for the following season.

Fall instructs for many teams finish up by October 1st, some by October 15th. For simplicity’s sake, we’re going to say that our short-season player in question here is dismissed for the offseason on October 14th. After reporting on February 14th, 8 months later, he’s dismissed to head home. Total monetary earnings from the entire season? $2,500 – $3,600.

Many teams do offer host families and those players who have signed with an agent can often get their agency to provide certain aspects of the game through deals with the agency, like shoes, gloves, socks, and other items that need to be replaced over the year. I’m not sure about you, but $2,500 – $3,600 barely would cover clothing and personal effects for me for an 8 month period.

Below Poverty

So our short-season example is an extreme example financially, but not a crazy one. Many players in short-season ball are those who did not receive big bonuses when they signed as either draft picks or international signees.

The piece Emily put out had a great breakdown on salaries that agree with a lot of what I’ve heard and read as well. To break things down a bit more, on average, roughly 50% of players in the minor leagues received less than $10,000 as a one-time bonus when they signed (once Latin American players are included). They’re not able to seek employment from a higher bidder until their 6th or 7th season as a minor leaguer, so they don’t have a chance to even negotiate their wages until that point.

Until then, as Emily’s numbers pointed out, only the top-end players at AAA even end up above the poverty line ($14,380 for a single-income household nationally), while the mid-range for an A-ball player is half that amount.

The other end of things is that while players are “only” working 8 months per year, their teams, especially once they’ve reached full-season ball, have distinct offseason programs set out for them that requires them to be working out often multiple hours per day. That doesn’t make a high-paying job very feasible.

Just to put some numbers in perspective. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Someone working full-time at that rate would make $10,045.60 over 8 months. That’s a number only exceeded by those in AAA. Incredibly, over 4 months, a player working a minimum wage job in the offseason that’s able to scrape together 40 hours per week would earn just over $5,000. Incredibly, that’d nearly double many A-ball players’ earned wages on the year.

The Toronto Blue Jays recently announced that they’re going to give their players a 50% raise for the 2019 season. While that’s great, and it should be lauded as bucking the current system, it should also be noted that a 50% raise, even on the top end of the scale would mean A-ball players are still earning nearly $2,000 below poverty line, AA players would still be below poverty line, and AAA players would still be averaging roughly $10.75/hour at a yearly hourly rate. The minimum wage in Toronto is $11.05 (rising to $11.55 on April 1, 2019).

Following a dream

Dirk’s piece was tremendous on this issue because it brought out something that really few people talk about. What happens after these players have spent all these years living in poverty and then for the first time attempt to enter the full-time workforce?

Those who did complete a college degree before being drafted on their school’s dime are in the best shape, but even then, they’re now looking for their first job with no career-related experience for 5+ years while pursuing their dream. Those who went straight to pro ball after high school or did not complete college before being drafted are left with a high school education at 25-30 years old, seeking their first full-time employment.

Be realistic as a potential employer – what position other than a low-skill position would you be willing to hire a person with a high school education and 5-10 years of playing baseball on their resume? Even the biggest baseball nut among us has to understand that those skills learned on the field aren’t going to translate to anything even resembling an entry-level corporate position.

That realization has a horrific final point for many players who’ve now had their dream stripped away from them, only to be told that pursuing their dream has cost them the opportunity to provide for their family. They become overwhelmed by the hole they find themselves in and choose to end things.

It took suicides and extreme violence from former players before the National Football League was willing to acknowledge the game’s role in head trauma that was severely impacting players’ post-football lives and do something about it. Hopefully, baseball wises up before it gets to that point. Lives have already been lost. There should not need to be more.