Reese Kaplan -- And the Rich Get Richer

Earlier this week Mack opined that the proposed contraction of 26% of all minor league teams (42 in all) from the MLB hierarchy was a bad thing for baseball based upon the loss of professional sports experienced by many towns that otherwise would never know them.  When I moved from the New York City area to El Paso, I knew how it felt only to have an independent minor league team – the El Paso Diablos – as my only outlet for organized baseball.  It was not good, to say the least.  When the San Diego Padres decided to move their AAA franchise to El Paso, it was a huge cause for celebration out here as we got to see players one step from the majors (not to mention big leaguers on rehab assignments). 

Yes, I agree that’s a huge cultural loss for a great many small towns, but two other aspects of the elimination of franchises immediately came to mind with respect to what MLB is planning to do.  The first has to do with the diminishment of skills.  As it is, there are just 30 major league teams with now 26 players on the roster.  That’s 780 jobs.  For playing a children’s game, the athletes are well compensated.  The major league minimum salary in 2020 is projected to be $563,500.  That’s hardly chicken feed yet at the same time, the top 780 CEOs or top 780 lawyers or top 780 accountants or top 780 doctors earn far more.  The average salary for a neurosurgeon in the USA is over $618,000. 

Some feel the real motivation of the move is to pad the pockets of the team owners.  Getting rid of a layer or more of minor leagues would mean fewer salaries to pay, fewer hotel nights to fund, fewer bus trips and plane tickets to buy and less food to provide to the ballplayers.  As Mack said, it’s a business and improving the bottom line is the responsibility to the shareholders (though most teams in professional sports are privately held with the sole exception perhaps of the Green Bay Packers).  So if it is not benefitting the shareholders, it is indeed helping to improve the profitability of a select few - -the owners. 

Think ahead several years to what this change will do to the quality of major league play.  If you eliminate one or more rungs up the development ladder, what you’ll be getting in the major leagues will have less polish and cruder skills than what we see today.  Take it out of the baseball realm for a minute and think perhaps of skilled trades that still use apprenticeships as preparation for independent work.  Would a guy straight out of a technical school be prepared to hit the ground running to rewire a nuclear power plant?  You’d probably want him to go through the requisite 4 years or so of on-the-job training before you entrusted him with that level of assignment, no?

However, the other issue that arose about this change has long been a pet peeve of mine and that’s the abhorrent level of compensation given to minor league ballplayers.  I first covered the issue here and then again here.   

So if you’re saving hundreds of millions of dollars through this move, wouldn’t it make sense to treat the now diminished number of minor league ballplayers a bit more fairly when it comes to compensation?  Don’t hold your breath…remember, MLB has an anti-trust exemption and thus can act with impunity when it comes to minimum wage.

Now MLB is offering up the opportunity for the disenfranchised minor league owners to run a “Dream League” sanctioned by Major League Baseball but unaffiliated with any teams.  This league would be fully funded by the team owners including the salaries, insurance and other expenses for staffing it.  It’s interesting that the rationale given for this change is the condition of some minor league ballparks which MLB felt were not up to professional standards.  People who visited or saw games from places like the old Las Vegas 51s at Cashman Field could attest to that.  However, ballparks have been built or are being built all over the country to replace them.  In many cases taxpayers funded the construction for a business entity that will no longer be there.  The New York Mets are facing that with their own Binghamton Rumble Ponies whose new stadium will sit vacant as they are slated for contraction.   Once again that anti-trust exemption comes to the rescue. 

No one knows exactly what the long-term ramifications of this move will be, but it would appear that the MLB owners are banking on a political climate most favorable to billionaires at the expense of often poor athletes from impoverished upbringings who now will have fewer opportunities to realize their dream of playing in a World Series.  If you ask anyone from the fans to the taxpayers to the ushers to the vendors to the parking lot attendants, who is in favor of this move, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone.  Sometimes it’s good to be king.