Atlanta Braves need to lead the way for minor league salary bumps

My Comment

Multiple things in this story don’t make a lot of sense to me:

(1) “How much of the bill do Major League teams foot, and what costs fall to Minor League Baseball ownership groups?”

MLB teams pay the players – not the MiLB ownership groups. That’s set up in the player development contracts. Even if there’s a percentage kicked back to the Major league clubs from the affiliates, that’s not about player salaries, and many of these ownership groups are barely making ends meet anyway.

Moreover, there are multiple teams that own both ends of the deal: the Braves own all but one of their own MiLB franchises, for instance. So especially in their case, we’re not talking about a zero-sum gain here… they would certainly have to kick in more.

(2) The notion that higher salaries would mean fewer teams. That’s going to be a problem for multiple teams with long-term lease deals made to acquire stadiums.

The other part of this would be the assumption that ‘fewer teams’ would have to mean dropping entire levels – perhaps (example) combining AAA with AA and AA with A+ to compress the number of jobs.

That might be a threat, but it also doesn’t make sense given the math.

If you remove one minor league level, that’s only maybe 1/6th of the MiLB jobs, yet the salaries need to be increased a lot more than this 17%… never mind the loss of talent to the sport [that would come from a reduction of teams]. If it’s 2 levels that would be jettisoned, then it would cripple player development.

Frankly, MLB has been getting away with this practice of limited salaries in the minors forever, even as revenues continue to leap upward. I calculated once that tripling all minors’ salaries might cost teams around $3m (that may be off a bit now, but it’s close), which of course is the outlay for just 2 median-salaried major leaguers today.

If MLB doesn’t do the right thing here, then guys like Kyler Murray will simply be leading the parade of athletes avoiding baseball.

Response to a comment reply noting that Murray constitutes a ‘pretty small parade’:

I was a bit glib there: the parade has actually been in progress for years… all you have to do is look at the participation in baseball by Americans, particularly black Americans. Latin participation is way up, but domestic players are down.

You simply don’t get paid enough if you’re not a bonus baby or destined to be a big star. other major sports pay early and pay well. Baseball is not getting the same level of athletes. c.f. the Emily Waldon story noted by Drellich.

MLB has to [do this, and has to] keep up for the long-term good of the sport.