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Dirk Hayhurst Former MiLB and MLB Player, Outspoken Critic of the MLB

A player coming out of high school into a single A team will get less than a player that has graduated college and is going on to a double or triple A team. Other than this signing bonus, player accounts reveal they are paid “between $45 and $80 per game, depending on your level,” but that they were required to find their own housing and buy their own equipment. In fact, an organization called “More Than Baseball” aims to engage the MLB fan base into supporting Minor leaguers as they try to pay for housing, food, equipment, clubhouse dues, and more. The fact that this organization exists demonstrates a problem within the MLB, in the way they treat the majority of their workforce can be called negligent or indifferent at best. Relying on fan base support to care for the majority of workers in the labor force exposes the incompetence or indifference of MLB officials. I suppose the question must be asked if playing in the Minors is a real job, whether it holds the credibility to be a person’s one and only source of income. In my opinion, the answer to this question is yes. Players are required to put in more of their own personal time and energy into playing in the Minors than most minimum wage-paying jobs. Granted, an eight hour work day is not as quantifiable in the Minors as it is in an entry level job “regular” job, however, that fact doesn’t take away from any of the labor that these athletes must put into their game. The commitment that is asked of these players is enormous, and essentially, these young people willingly put their entire futures on the line to be considered for the bigs, accepting an indefinite amount of time with unsubstantial pay. 

The MLB corporation recruits players into the Minors, under the pretense that maybe one day they could make it to the Majors. The Minors would not be an effective staging platform for aspiring players if it didn’t have the labor force to fill the teams and create competition. In a more substantial way than the opportunity the MLB presents to an athlete, the athlete, in turn, works to allow the MLB to continue thriving with the most talented players the scouts can find. Logistically, it means playing for the MiLB team that recruited you, wherever they are located (regardless of it requires moving) and, as of now, donating your time into getting better and making yourself a more valuable asset to the MLB. Minor leaguers get a small signing bonus when they are recruited to a team, the value of this bonus depends on the team class and education level.

Minor League Baseball Teams Across the US and Canada

Dan Halem, the deputy commissioner of the MLB, responded to concerns about minor league player salaries and job security by saying: “If they’d like to be a careerist minor league player, they should play in independent leagues. The affiliated minor leagues are really to develop players for the major leagues.” This attitude simply demonstrates the Major League Baseball Organization’s refusal to take responsibility for their part in the minor league players that view their occupation as their career.

The future for this organization is uncertain, as the MLB is threatening to completely eliminate the MiLB and replace it with a totally new league. Assuming they don't dismantle the system that has developed into something much bigger than simply just a Major League recruitment program, it would only benefit the MLB to invest more in player resources, salary, and facility conditions.

To undervalue the work and community impact of the Minor league teams would be a detrimental mistake for the MLB organization. However, even if the livelihoods of these teams were not at stake, doing nothing would also be a mistake, the MiLB should also change its structure to increase the quality of their yields (the players).

Major league baseball. America’s favorite pastime, and a perfect representation of an individualized, self-motivated journey to make to the bigs. Countless movies have been produced off that single premise, a premise not characteristic to baseball alone, but the American ideal that hard-work can bring about anything one can dream of. One day we say, and to some extent, all of this is true. Obviously if you work hard in something, you will get better, however let’s consider this paradigm within the context of Minor League Baseball, the first step into “making it big” in baseball. The official site for the minor leagues posted an article entitled “Want to play in the Minors? Here’s how,” talking about the recruiting and scouting process that the organization follows. They reference a study conducted in 2013 that found that only two percent of college athletes make it to the professional league, and the odds drop significantly, to about a half a percent, for players that make it to the league from high school. These numbers speak for themselves, it is extremely difficult to make it to the Majors, which is fair, it is a competition for the most elite group of players in baseball. We also cannot pretend that those who do not make it to the majors are implicitly less talented or worked any less hard than those who did make it. In this situation, success is less about personal dedication to one’s goal and more about luck, as logistically only few can become a part of the major leagues. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the majority of the Major League Baseball workforce operates in the Minor League. In the Minors right now, there are 256 teams, with about 6,500 players. However in the MLB, in total, there are about 7,500 players, which means about 1,200 of those players are in the Majors. A critical issue to the well being of this group of over 5,000 people is that recent legislation ensures the MLB does not require them to pay minimum wage, acknowledge any overtime the players put in, or pay the players during Spring Training. Whether or not participation in the Minor leagues should be considered a real job and warrant fair pay, it is rather embarrassing that the Major League Baseball Organization is seemingly unable to provide fairly for its labor force- and exposes their rather dismissive attitude toward the majority of their employees. 

Major league baseball. America’s favorite pastime, and a perfect representation of an individualized, self-motivated journey to make to the bigs. Countless movies have been produced off that single premise, a premise not characteristic to baseball alone, but the American ideal that hard-work can bring about anything one can dream of. One day we say, and to some extent, all of this is true.

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