So you think College Athletes have it rough?

[Pyperkub]

Try minor league baseball players:

As part of a provision within the 2,232-page $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that President Trump needs to sign before midnight Friday to keep the government open, the Boys of Summer in the minor leagues would be exempted from a class of workers under federal labor law for minimum and overtime pay, which would quash several lawsuits by players seeking to earn a living wage.

As a result, salaries for the players who never make it to the big leagues could be as low as $1,100 a month.

So yeah, actual professionals being paid less than minimum wage. By law. In the meantime, minor league attendance is exploding.

[Jeff V]

Seems to me that if they suck at baseball, maybe they should follow a different career path.

I've never been to a minor league game although I live fairly close to one and my company has annual events there.

[hepcat]

That’s like saying if you’re not working in the upper offices of Microsoft or Oracle, you suck and should seek a new career path.

[GreenGoo]

While it's true that many people play their entire careers in the minors, it's also a training league and a maturing league. It's also used to shift rosters around, I believe.

In any case, I don't feel that being a better baseball player than 99.99% of the population but got as good as 0.01% of the population means you should get screwed.

[Daehawk]

Posted in the YT video thread..a minor league ass beating his GF up. He lost his $1000 ride and got arrested too. Im surprised they fired him but VERY glad to see it.

[GreenGoo]

k.

[pr0ner]

Seems to me that if they suck at baseball, maybe they should follow a different career path.

I've never been to a minor league game although I live fairly close to one and my company has annual events there.

Funny to see you missing the point via another one of your typically obtuse viewpoints.

[Jeff V]

Seems to me that if they suck at baseball, maybe they should follow a different career path.

I've never been to a minor league game although I live fairly close to one and my company has annual events there.

Funny to see you missing the point via another one of your typically obtuse viewpoints.

What is your point? That shitty players with no hope of making the big time can't earn a living wage playing a game they suck at? Boo fucking hoo.

[pr0ner]

Seems to me that if they suck at baseball, maybe they should follow a different career path.

I've never been to a minor league game although I live fairly close to one and my company has annual events there.

Funny to see you missing the point via another one of your typically obtuse viewpoints.

What is your point? That shitty players with no hope of making the big time can't earn a living wage playing a game they suck at? Boo fucking hoo.

A minor league baseball player at any level is better at baseball than you and I will ever be at anything. Yet I earn in 2 days what they earn in a month. Why shouldn't they be paid a living wage?
Defaulting to "they suck at baseball" is obtuse.

[Holman]

Is someone making good money from minor league baseball? Owners? Management? Major league teams that rely on their pool of backup talent?

If so, seems like players ought to be cut into it (as should workers in any successful industry).

[Isgrimnur]

USA Today May 8, 2017

Class AA teams that 30 years ago were worth $500,000 are now worth $16 million to $25 million in some markets.

Some Class AAA teams are valued at more than $30 million. According to Forbes, minor league baseball’s 20 most valuable teams are worth an average of $37.5 million, up 35% from 2013. The Class AAA Sacramento River Cats are the most valuable ($49 million). The El Paso Chihuahuas, who also play in the Pacific Coast League, are valued at $38.7 million. The Charlotte Knights of the Class AAA International League, who, like El Paso, moved to a new ballpark in 2014, have an estimated value of $47.5 million.
...
Affiliated minor league teams drew 42 million fans in 2016, and not just because of new business techniques and new money. The fans come because minor league ball is still slapstick after all these years. The current operators of teams are very much contemporaries of the moms and pops who created the culture of the minors, brought out by dizzy bat races and mascot meet-and-greets.

“The core of what we do has not changed: It is affordable family fun. We scream that from the rooftops,” Babby says. “Our fans know they can come to the ballpark for a $5 ticket, and hot dogs are $2 every game.”

Similarly, the Class AAA teams in Sacramento, El Paso and Charlotte who are high on the Forbes list sell tickets for $10 or less.
...
The goal of MiLB Enterprises is to hunt for new money for operators, so they don’t have to depend so much on ticket revenue.

[hepcat]

Seems to me that if they suck at baseball, maybe they should follow a different career path.

I've never been to a minor league game although I live fairly close to one and my company has annual events there.

Funny to see you missing the point via another one of your typically obtuse viewpoints.

What is your point? That shitty players with no hope of making the big time can't earn a living wage playing a game they suck at? Boo fucking hoo.

Sometimes I envision you sitting on a porch yelling at squirrels and wildly waving a cane.

[gbasden]

i do believe that everyone should be able to make a living wage. That being said, I keep being told it's ok for athletes to make millions of dollars a year to play a children's game because capitalism pays them what they are worth. Is it just that talent doesn't matter in the minor leagues? I'd personally look at starting pay for teachers or pilots first.

[LawBeefaroni]

It's like acting and other careers. You have to "pay your dues" being underpaid and exploited if you want a shot at the big time. At least for some hopefuls. . There are many who have no hope of making it but they don't know it (or won't admit it) so they toil away and make owners money based on that deception.


The lack of a MiLB player's union doesn't help and it's basically prevented by the MLBPA. Kind of like the SAG monopoly for actors.


Here's a good read from last year:


THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO CHASE YOUR PRO BASEBALL DREAMS...FOR 12 BUCKS AN HOUR

[msteelers]

I used to work for the New York Mets and their single A affiliate the St Lucie Mets. The sport of baseball is such a grind, I don't know why anybody actively wants to be involved in it. The players I get. The draw of playing in the big leagues is big. But everyone else involved? I don't get it.

The office employees get there at 9am and most have to stay until the game is over, which is usually after 9:30 at night, but sometimes later. I worked a game one time that was already running late. The Mets were up by 2 in the top of the 9th, 2 outs. It started to rain, but the umps let them keep playing because the game was so close to ending. The next two batters get on, and then it starts to rain so badly that the officials stop it. When the field crew runs out there with the tarp, the infield is so soaked that the tarp was sucked to the dirt. 20 grown men yanking on the tarp, and it refuses to budge. The infield is now a swimming pool, and the guys give up. 15 minutes later the rain stops, and it's clear the infield is ruined. But at this point the officials can't just end the game. It's up to the opposing coach, and he refuses to quit. The tying run is on 1st! It takes the field crew two and a half hours to get the infield back in a playable condition. The teams come back out to warm up at 12:15. Play resumes at 12:25. It's a 3-pitch strikeout, the game is over at 12:28.



Stuff like that happened on a regular basis. And being the play-by-play guy for a baseball team is my worst nightmare. That guy calls every single game, with maybe 3 days off a month. Not only does he do the game all by himself, but he still had to show up at the office the next morning at 9am along with everyone else. You can't pay me enough money to do that, and I guarantee you he didn't make a lot of money.

Speaking of money, I think you might be surprised to find out that the Mets are extremely cheap. Every year they cut costs at the stadium. The first year I worked employees got our meals comped at the food stand. That went away after the first year. When the employees revolted they compromised by giving us a 50% discount. The next year they swapped out their really good chicken tenders for discount tenders that were disgusting. Then they stopped supplying lids for the drinks. Last year they started charging for sauerkraut. 50 cents. FOR SAUERKRAUT!!!

I can't speak for minor league baseball as a whole, but prior to Tebow the St Lucie Mets attendance was a joke. Announced attendance would be in the 300-500 range during the week, and climb up to just over 1,000 on the weekends. Actual attendance would be far less than that, because the announced number would include all of the season ticket holders, even if they didn't show up.

I wasn't involved at all with team operations, but from where I sat the vast majority of the players on the teams were just warm bodies. Last year with Tebow there might have been two prospects on the roster. Everyone else is just there to field a team, or in Tebow's case sell tickets and merchandise.

I finally quit after last season. I worked in the sound room, doing the announcing and playing music for the stadium. Throughout the season they would randomly criticize our music choices. It started during spring training. I was playing the Cops theme like I had done a thousand times before. Suddenly our radio blows up "TURN THAT SHIT OFF!" Turns out one of the players had been arrested recently. I guess I'm supposed to now know which players on the field have a habit of beating the crap out of their wives. This continued throughout the season, culminating with an incident in the last week of the regular season. The Mets catcher was hurt. I forget how, but he was down for a long time. I start playing music. I forget which song. It might have been Worth It by Fifth Harmony. They radio up. "Are you saying it's worth it that our guy is hurt, turn it off!" I start playing "Hooked On A Feeling". "TURN THAT SHIT OFF!" They were uncomfortable with the line "I can't stop this feeling, deep inside of me".

tl/dr.... baseball sucks.

[RunningMn9]

So yeah, actual professionals being paid less than minimum wage. By law. In the meantime, minor league attendance is exploding.

To be fair, I've gone to minor league games before. Tickets directly behind home plate are $8. And the stadium might hold a couple thousand people. It's not like they are filling 50,000 seats with an average ticket price of $100 and then paying the players $68 a game.

[RunningMn9]

i do believe that everyone should be able to make a living wage.

Doing anything they want?

Minor league baseball players *can* make a living wage, just not by playing minor league baseball apparently.

[GreenGoo]

Each team is worth 10's of millions.

Presumably they could pay their stable of race horses a piece of that. We're not talking about major league salaries.

There's no rule that trying to make it big has to be a shitty, demeaning, exploitive grind in any field, including baseball.

[RunningMn9]

*Some* teams are worth 10’s of millions. There is no rule that trying to make it big has to be awful.

There’s also no rule that it has to be (or will be) lucrative. They have a workforce that will do almost anything to work there. They don’t need to entice them with money. Why would they, when hope appears to be more than enough?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[pr0ner]

The major league teams pay the salaries of the players in their farm systems, though. The minor league teams aren't responsible for that.

Also, here's a comparison (from a 2017 article) between AAA baseball and the AHL, the AAA NHL farm league. Pretty sure MLB teams could afford to open up the checkbook a little bit and at least make sure their minor leaguers don't have to eat fast food every day on the road.

[RunningMn9]

I certainly wouldn’t mind if minor league players made more. But I struggle to conclude that they deserve more or have some fundamental right to make $X because they want to make money playing minor league baseball.

They desperately want to play baseball. That’s a terrible negotiating starting point.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Isgrimnur]

Especially when you have has-beens and never-weres paying thousands every year for a few days of playing.

Some pros are being advised to adapt the attitude of fantasy campers. John Murray, a sports psychologist in Palm Beach, Fla., counsels pro athletes. "I tell them, 'Go out there tonight with the mindset that you want to play so badly that you'd pay to do it.' "

[gbasden]

i do believe that everyone should be able to make a living wage.

Doing anything they want?

Minor league baseball players *can* make a living wage, just not by playing minor league baseball apparently.

No, not doing anything they want. I'd love to make a living wage playing boardgames, but nobody is paying me for that. I do think that if people are going to employ people to play sports they should be forced to pay the players for any hours that they have to be there and that they make at least minimum wage, and I favor a robust minimum wage of around $15. I don't support the weird rules some industries have where they can get away with paying people $3 an hour because of some other bullshit is all.

[GreenGoo]

*Some* teams are worth 10’s of millions. There is no rule that trying to make it big has to be awful.

There’s also no rule that it has to be (or will be) lucrative. They have a workforce that will do almost anything to work there. They don’t need to entice them with money. Why would they, when hope appears to be more than enough?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Because there are labor laws that protect nearly every other form of labor from this type of exploitation?

If you have a problem with unpaid internship, why would a small stipend be enough.

They paid them nearly nothing while generating millions from their labor because they can isn't an ethical answer.

The average club is worth nearly 40 mil. I'd say that covers my generalisation on club worth.

[malchior]

Because there are labor laws that protect nearly every other form of labor from this type of exploitation?

If you have a problem with unpaid internship, why would a small stipend be enough.

They paid them nearly nothing while generating millions from their labor because they can isn't an ethical answer.

The average club is worth nearly 40 mil. I'd say that covers my generalisation on club worth.

I at first took this tack but then I started thinking about the practicals. All this change does is make the players FLSA exempt vs. non-exempt. The pro is that it obviates a need for the teams to do a lot of unnecessary timekeeping. The con is theoretically the players could be paid very low wages for an unlimited amount of work. I think the reality is going to end up landing in the middle somewhere and not too far from where they are now. Which is not great. However I don't think treating them like hourly workers makes much sense considering the special skills required. The point of some of the FLSA protections is that unskilled labor can be replaced at a whim with other unskilled labor and thus they need a backstop. That is not really the situation here.

I also read that the teams in the minors typically don't have much control over wages to begin with since they typically are set at the MLB level. So the teams would be saddled with all the administrative day-to-day burden for a problem that is largely out of their control. That doesn't sound workable to me. I admittedly have incomplete information but I believe the best fix I saw is for the MLBPA to step up (if possible) and cover these guys and negotiate a fair wage for them.

[RunningMn9]

The average club is worth nearly 40 mil. I'd say that covers my generalisation on club worth.

Might want to check that stat again. The $37M is the average of the 20 most valuable minor league teams. That leaves the other 227 minor league baseball teams which are worth substantially less.

And that may not include the independent teams/leagues.

Either way, as noted, if the salaries are set by the major league teams affiliated with the minor league clubs, it probably doesn’t matter how much a tiny subset of them is worth.

[pr0ner]

Because there are labor laws that protect nearly every other form of labor from this type of exploitation?

If you have a problem with unpaid internship, why would a small stipend be enough.

They paid them nearly nothing while generating millions from their labor because they can isn't an ethical answer.

The average club is worth nearly 40 mil. I'd say that covers my generalisation on club worth.

I at first took this tack but then I started thinking about the practicals. All this change does is make the players FLSA exempt vs. non-exempt. The pro is that it obviates a need for the teams to do a lot of unnecessary timekeeping. The con is theoretically the players could be paid very low wages for an unlimited amount of work. I think the reality is going to end up landing in the middle somewhere and not too far from where they are now. Which is not great. However I don't think treating them like hourly workers makes much sense considering the special skills required. The point of some of the FLSA protections is that unskilled labor can be replaced at a whim with other unskilled labor and thus they need a backstop. That is not really the situation here.

I also read that the teams in the minors typically don't have much control over wages to begin with since they typically are set at the MLB level. So the teams would be saddled with all the administrative day-to-day burden for a problem that is largely out of their control. That doesn't sound workable to me. I admittedly have incomplete information but I believe the best fix I saw is for the MLBPA to step up (if possible) and cover these guys and negotiate a fair wage for them.

The MLBPA won't step up for those MiLB players. They probably give less of a crap about guys in the minors than the MLB teams themselves do.

[GreenGoo]

The average club is worth nearly 40 mil. I'd say that covers my generalisation on club worth.

Might want to check that stat again. The $37M is the average of the 20 most valuable minor league teams. That leaves the other 227 minor league baseball teams which are worth substantially less.

And that may not include the independent teams/leagues.

Either way, as noted, if the salaries are set by the major league teams affiliated with the minor league clubs, it probably doesn’t matter how much a tiny subset of them is worth.

Sure, ok. How much is "substantially less"? If I wanted to buy a team, what are we looking at? How much are the lower valued teams worth?

Pay them less and give them less protection under the law than a 15 year old working at McDonald's. Because they *really* want the job.

You know the laws are there because employers have a long history of exploiting their work force, right?

I guess I would ask you why this particular form of employment doesn't deserve the protection given to the rest of Americans?

Any business that can't afford to pay their workers the absolute minimum under the law should simply go out of business. If a business isn't profitable it isn't profitable. The answer isn't to exploit the workers because they are desperate enough to sign anything.

I don't particularly care about minor league baseball, but this cavalier attitude about them giving up their dream to claim the riches Walmart is offering to stack boxes in the warehouse if they don't like it is asinine.

I won't say that this attitude is uniquely American, but it certainly seems more prevalent there. It's weirdly indifferent to problems such as this.

[Rip]

The number I read on the low end was $6M.

[GreenGoo]

The number I read on the low end was $6M.

Thanks, I couldn't find it. Everyone wanted to talk about the Forbes article.

I probably can't get that level of financing.

[Moliere]

A One-Page Provision About Minor League Baseball Shows How Broken Congress' Legislative Process Is

Congress bowed to the wishes of a powerful special interest and used the federal budget bill to put a big thumb on the scale of a lawsuit that has nothing to do with the budget. It did all that as part of a piece of legislation that totaled more than 2,200 pages and was made public just over a day before both chambers passed it. The baseball provision is found on page 1,967 of the bill, tucked in between a grant for increasing background checks for people who work with children and a grant to "protect young athletes from abuse."

The language included in the budget omnibus was lifted from a bill introduced by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), called the "Save America's Pastime Act." The bill did not get any cosponsors and has not received so much as a committee hearing or a vote. Yet it's now law.

It's an example of "how our government is operating right now," Garrett Broshius, a minor league player turned attorney who is the players in their lawsuit, told Bloomberg Law. "You have billionaires lobbying on something proposed in secret and rushed into a spending bill even though it has nothing to do with spending."
...
This doesn't mean—as Mother Jones and others have suggested—that Congress has condemned minor league ballplayers to work for "poverty wages." No one is forcing anyone to become a minor league baseball player, nor to sign a $3,000 contract for five months of work. Each player chooses to work for those terms, and most are doing so in hopes of reaching the major leagues and getting a much larger paycheck in the future. There are many circumstances in which people might choose to defer compensation in the present for the promise of greater opportunity.

[GreenGoo]

It's not deferred compensation though. Unless taking an entry level programming job is "deferring compensation" as well.

Yes, we can all agree that minor league players are doing it of their own free will.

Agreeing to something is not the be all/end all though.

You can't agree to give up your rights to a fair jury and a speedy trial for example. My only point is that sometimes it doesn't matter what the person in question thinks or agrees to as part of their employment.

Labour laws exist for a reason. I have yet to hear a logical argument why being a professional baseball player should be an exception to those laws.

If your argument is that labor laws are archaic and unneeded today, then we'll just have to disagree.

[RunningMn9]

It certainly seems absurd to consider them "deferred" wages. They are never going to get them, even if they make it to MLB.