Contraction of the Minor Leagues Could be a Good Thing

… or not!

NOTE: I wrote this about a month ago and now we have some new information. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/sources-milb-ready-to-agree-to-significant-reduction-in-teams/

It turns out I may have been right. I thought this would give you all something to talk about until May 1st!

Unless we have been living under a rock, we have all heard that MLB wants to contract 40 some teams from the Minor Leagues. Let me go on record right now by saying I am in favor of this… with some caveats. Let me start by saying that baseball is America’s Pasttime. Baseball will continue to evolve with respect to electronic balls and strikes, pitch clocks, designated runners, pinch runners and the like. However, the fact remains that it is very difficult for a minor league player to make the Show.

About 6 to 10 percent of minor league players make it to the Majors. Less than one out of ten. The odds are pretty bad. Since 1976, the rock-bottom salary in the majors has gone up more than 2,500 percent, while in the minors, it has gone up less than 70 percent. Starting pay for minor leaguers is between $1,100 and $2,150 a month, and only during the season, which can be as short as three months.  This can no longer be tolerated!

Garret Broshuis was a pitcher in the San Francisco Giants’ minor league system, a University of Missouri right-hander who was selected in the fifth round of the 2004 draft. The minors are filled with players like Broshuis who probably won’t make it to the Show but are crucial to fill out rosters and help develop major league talent. What he has done after leaving baseball may pave a path to change.

Mother Jones covered this exact subject and wrote as follows:

“Now that he’s hung up his glove to practice law, Broshuis thinks he’s found a way to change that. In February, he helped file Senne v. MLB, a federal lawsuit on behalf of 20 former minor league players who allege that Major League Baseball violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws by paying them less than minimum wage and failing to compensate them for overtime. “I think it’s a pretty novel approach,” says Michael McCann, a law professor and director of the University of New Hampshire’s Sports and Entertainment Law Institute. “Wage law is not an area that’s been brought up frequently in sports law.”

Broshuis (pronounced BRUSH-house), who now works in St. Louis, considers himself one of the lucky ones—he did, after all, collect a six-figure signing bonus before heading to the minors. Most of his teammates, he recalls, signed for a thousand bucks and relied on their parents to pay cellphone bills and rent. The family that housed Broshuis lent him a beat-up truck to drive players to the ballpark; team meals consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cold-cut trays. When the offseason came around, everyone scrambled to find temporary work, often relying on private lessons to get through the winter.

Long story short: This is the first of what I believe are many lawsuits against MLB which will ultimately challenge their Anti-Trust Status. If you want an education on Anti-Trust Baseball Status, go HERE. I think baseball knows it is coming and is preparing to be stripped of that status.

The lawsuit was filed in 2014 and like any suit of this type, it is moving forward with the speed of a glacier. However, it is moving. The Sporting News posted an update on the case late last year:

In Senne v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, a lawsuit brought in 2014 by players represented by Korein Tillery, minor league players seek to remedy the low salaries by using state and federal wage-and-hour laws. Major League Baseball responded by lobbying Congress for an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which Congress provided in March 2018. Named the Save America’s Pastime Act, the exemption was included on page 1,967 of an omnibus spending bill. 

The case, however, continues to proceed. In August 2019, the players won an important appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed them to proceed as a class action under the wage laws of several states. The players asked the Court to certify a class to adjudicate their minimum wage and overtime claims for work performed in California, Arizona, and Florida. The Ninth Circuit agreed. As a result, approximately 15,000 current and former minor-league players will have their minimum-wage and overtime claims heard on the merits. Korein Tillery and its co-counsel, Pearson, Simon & Warshaw, will represent the class of players. 

The Sporting News had an interview with Broshuis late last year. Here it is:

SPORTING NEWS: A lot has changed since we started talking about these issues years ago. Wanted to see how you feel things have shifted from your perspective, especially in the past couple months. 

BROSHUIS: One thing that’s certainly changed is Major League Baseball has said they’re serious about increasing salaries now. We’ve been fighting for that for over five years now, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like, or if it’s going to come to fruition, but we certainly hope it does come to fruition because it’s long overdue. Thousands of other ballplayers hope so, as well. 

SN: Does this latest development, the threatened elimination of 42 minor-league teams, impact what you’re trying to do? 

BROSHUIS: I really do hope they’re serious about raising salaries, and I hope it’s a meaningful raise and not just a small raise. You take the Blue Jays, for instance, and even though they increased salaries by 50 percent last year, which is commendable, they took that first step on their own. That still means the salaries are below the poverty line for a lot of guys. And it still doesn’t do anything about spring training, when guys are working 60 or 70 hours per week and not getting paid at all.

But even if you’re serious about raising minor-league salaries, you shouldn’t have to cut minor-league teams in order to do that. We aren’t talking about huge sums of money, with minor-league players suddenly getting rich. We’re just talking about a decent, livable wage in accordance with the same laws that McDonald’s and Walmart comply with. Surely Major League Baseball could find a way to do that without cutting 25 percent of its minor-league teams, and by extension, 25 percent of its minor-league players. 

SN: I’ll admit, it was jarring to hear the commissioner say at the Winter Meetings in San Diego that minor-league players “deserve to be paid fairly” after what’s happened the past few years. Do you feel like the salary thing might be a pawn in what baseball is trying to do, to reduce the number of minor-league teams? 

BROSHUIS: I hope they’re serious about (raising salaries), but you have to look at it from a historical perspective. It was just March of 2018 where they succeeded in getting an exemption from minimum-wage laws passed after spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress. So, I hope they are serious about raising salaries, but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to cut teams.

There are some things that are real concerns for players. For instance, when they talk about playing conditions. Some of those fields don’t have the best playing conditions, and they actually are unsafe at times. That needs to be addressed. And there are issues with scheduling. Currently, the rules between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball only require one day off every 30 days. So if the league schedules a day off on Day 28, then waits another 27 days to have a day off, you’ve played pretty much two months straight with only a day off. So something needs to be done about that, too. That just wears out the players. 

Some of the alignment that’s occurred with teams moving, that is a real thing. You have leagues that are too spread out, and sometimes you have teams like the Nationals that are stuck with a Triple-A partner in Fresno that, geographically, doesn’t make sense. So some realignment does make sense. Those are real issues that need to be addressed from the players’ perspective. But, again, it seems like you could address those things, I would hope, without cutting 25 percent of your teams. I think there are other reasons behind this, other than just stadium upgrades and paying players more. I think there’s more to it than that. 

SN: What was your first thought when you looked at that list of the 42 teams?

BROSHUIS: What jumped out to me was that I played in a number of these towns, both as a member of a visiting team and the home team. The first place I played was in Salem, Ore., and I’m very fond of that area. The Northwest is one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and to think that it would be deprived of baseball, for the most part, it’s surprising. For a lot of those towns, the closest major-league team is Seattle, and that’s a really far drive for those fans. A team like that, a league like that is an introduction and professional baseball, for better or worse, what professional baseball is all about. 

SN: I saw that Senator Sanders took a little batting practice after your meeting, so I’ll ask you this: Can Bernie Sanders hit a curveball?  

BROSHUIS: (laughs) They didn’t trust me throwing to him, so I wouldn’t know. It looked like he was trying to work gap-to-gap pretty good, though. He rolled over the first couple to the third baseman, but then he started showing some gap-to-gap power. I was impressed for a guy in his 70s. 

SN: Aside from his gap-to-gap power, what was your takeaway from your meeting and how seriously he’s taking this issue? 

BROSHUIS: He was very prepared. Like he is with a lot of things, he is very passionate about it, too. This is something that’s personal to him. He was the mayor in Burlington, Vt., when they got their minor-league team, and that’s one of the teams on the chopping block. He’s also a lifelong baseball fan, and when he says he’s outraged, you really do feel he’s outraged over it.

There have been a lot of politicians who say they’re outraged over the plan to cut 42 minor-league baseball teams, but he’s the first one to take it a step further to say, “You’re right you need to pay minor-league players more, and there’s no excuse for not doing that in the past, and you shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cutting teams when you have the ability to pay those players a decent wage right now. You don’t need to be cutting minor-league teams in order to do it.” It’s great for him to support the players. 

SN: Realistically, how do you think this influx of political interest helps or hurts what you guys have been trying to do?

BROSHUIS: From the perspective of the minor-league owners, there’s a reason they went public with it. There are things Congress can do that gives Congress a lot of leverage. That antitrust exemption is obviously very dear to Major League Baseball. They are the only sport that has that type of exemption, and a lot of what they do is modeled over having that exemption. Looking at it from the minor-league standpoint, the current minor-league wages would be illegal under antitrust laws, if not for the antitrust exemption they have. The only reason they can collude on (minor-league) salaries at this point, without having to go through a union, is because they have that antitrust exemption.

That’s one thing, but there’s also the Save America’s Pastime Act that they passed a year-and-a-half ago, that Congress gifted that to them in the middle of the night in an omnibus spending bill. If Congress wanted to take that away from MLB, that gives a very powerful lever to Congress as well. So we certainly welcome politicians speaking out about this. To date, most politicians have been indifferent, at best, about the issues of minor-league players, and have far too often sided with ownership on this. We welcome the chance to speak to any other members of Congress on this, and educate them from the perspective of the players, because that perspective has been ignored for far too long.

SN: I feel like I’ve heard that threat, “take away the antitrust exemption,” since I was a little kid. Is this a big enough issue to make that a realistic option? Could this be something like Al Capone’s taxes?  

BROSHUIS: It depends on how hard the two sides dig in. Now, both sides are taking pretty extreme positions, and they’re doing everything publicly, and they’re at each other’s throats. And if they dig in and they’re entrenched, and neither side will give ground and they can’t reach an agreement, then, yeah, I think there is a serious threat that Congress will get involved.

We can analyze until we are paralyzed and we can come up with all types of dream scenarios, but I am more pragmatic about it. Baseball will contract those teams. It will happen. Get used to it. It’s what comes afterward that is up for debate. Here’s what I think has to happen:

• Minor league salaries have to increase to $70,000 for A-Ball, $85,000 for AA Ball and $100,000 for AAA ball. They have to get paid year-round so that they can train year-round (maybe then more can make it to the Show);
• Minor league “In-Season per diem” should be close to the same as a major league player. End of story. Think about it;
• After contracting 40+ teams, the existing facilities would have to be upgraded. Travel needs to be more regionalized. For instance, maybe A ball is in the East, AA is in the Midwest and AAA is in the West. Lrt’d use some logic here;
• Finally, I think MLB should provide “Seed Money” to fund a REAL Independent League. Entrepreneurs could use the seed money to start “academies or training centers” where minor league players, as well as college players and former MLB players, could come together in “hubs” whereby 9 or 10 teams could share a stadium and play 3 games a day. I believe there could be 4 or 5 “hubs” in certain areas of the country (maybe Canada and Mexico) where they could have different levels of players playing. There would have to be certain stipulations, but MLB would contribute a specific sum each year and there could be “loose affiliations.”

This is just the beginning of a “brainstorm.” Maybe these independent teams are academies and they get a “commission” for any player they “graduate” to a minor league team. Each stadium would play a “triple-header” every day and admission and food and drink would be how the owners make money.

Maybe games start at Noon, Four and Eight. I haven’t thought all of this through…and I don’t think you can, but I firmly believe that problems are opportunities in drag! There are two sides to every story. The owners will lie to you and the MLBPA will lie to you. Believe none of what they say and half of what they do.

This is just a conversation starter… Maybe it’s all about greed and nothing good will come from any of this. That’s always a possibility! In fact, with Rob Manfred, it’s a given!

Your thoughts?

Posting Content

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It is copyright infringement, BUT The Athletic knows that I am a big supporter of theirs and what has happened is that many people here who subscribe may have subscribed because of what I posted. They have FREE TRIALS as well. We can’t do it all the time, but an occasional one is not viewed by them to be a bad thing. It gets then more subscribers. I happen to know several of the writers. Just use it sparingly. In criminal law, it is called mens rea, which is the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime, as opposed to the action or conduct of the accused.

Never Surrender