Are minor league baseball players exploited?

Yeah, I don't think your 8-year minor-leaguers who washed out at Class AA are going to be able to pull in six figures.

Probably once you've been in an MLB boxscore, that opens the keys to the vault, if you're so incined.

 

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An eight-year major league veteran? He might make twice that.

 

Orr is also Canadian, he could make some serious coin coming home and working with the elite-level programs cropping up all over the country.

 

Fine. Who is going to send their kids to get help from Andy LaRoche?

 

Well, if we're talking only about guys who have appeared in MLB, you'd be surprised. There's not that many of them competing for the dollar in America's various outposts. Not every town is 80,000.

 

The best night for the guys on the low-A ball team I covered was the nights when a big leaguer would rehab with them. At worst, they were buying Outback Steakhouse for the guys after the game. One night there was a two-fer, pitcher and catcher who combined to pay to have the stadium chef prepare surf-and-turf for the team.

Just because 10th-rd picks are slotted at $200,000 doesn't mean they are getting that. And in-season means April-to Labor Day weekend. Go to instructs after the year and you'll get meal money and that's that. They want you spend six weeks after instructs at the Dominican facility? More meal money and that's that. Teams don't take too kindly to turning down invites so you can earn a living. That's if you are able to find a place willing to hire you for five months knowing you'll be gone in March.

So yeah, they're underpaid.

 

I know a lot of guys who have played minor pro hockey at every level across North America and through Europe and even Australia. Some guys played for a few years in the ECHL and got on the with the rest of their lives or spent some years in the AHL before heading to Europe. I know a few guys who are still mucking it in the low-level Central League and similar lower-division leagues in Europe, in their late-20s, early-30s. Yeah they love the game but they also don't know what else they would do. Hockey is all they have ever known and they'll keep playing as long as somebody will pay them.

Hayhurst's books are very good. Journeyman by Sean Pronger (Chris's brother) is also a good look at life on the fringes of the NHL.

 

I bet those minor-league baseball players are so underpaid that, if they weren't paid at all, there'd be little difficulty in filling out minor-league team rosters.

 

That's certainly not an argument for paying them poorly. There are people who will eat human feces for $27, too.

 

But why would MLB teams (or their minor-league business partners) want to fill their minor league rosters with people who aren't highly skilled? Would that be good for business?

 

In related news, anyone read Feinstein's new book on life in the minors?

 

I want to. Had forgotten it's out.