As working America is scrambling to understand, corral, and ultimately subdue the COVID-19 coronavirus, baseball and its players have been through a widely varied journey themselves.
Some players, particularly minor leaguers, are struggling to make ends meet, while others, mostly those caught up in the star-making machinery, haven’t a care in the world as they quarantine and social-distance luxuriously.
It Helps If You’re Married to Your Catcher
Take the New York Yankees’ new ace Gerrit Cole, who was seen recently playing catch with his wife, former UCLA softball star Amy, alongside their swanky manse.
Cole is guaranteed to make $36 million this year from a team that, like all the others, is experiencing dry creek beds of cash with normal revenue streams drying up.
With no games comes no broadcast ad revenue; with no fannies in the seats, there are no eyeballs staring at stadium signage, and no t-shirts or nachos being sold at gift shops and snack stands.
But, a veteran player like Cole, and many others, have years of previous million-dollar contracts, and should have invested to the point of being able to weather an unexpected work stoppage, regardless of cause. Plus, major leaguers have a union.
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But, there are other American ballplayers for whom life isn’t quite as convenient, lush, and cushy, and we’re not talking about those who have signed MLB contracts.
With the minimum major league salary just a bit under $600,000 for 2020, even the player with the scantest of service time probably isn’t looking for an Uber gig at the moment.
Diamond Refugees
After a winter of training and working out, a minor league player comes into spring camp expecting help from the parent club with food and housing.
No player for any team —major or minor leaguer— is paid a salary during Spring Training. A typical spring per diem for those in minor league camp is $20 or $25, or about $175 a week. Most of their meals are provided at the team’s hotel.
In a memo to teams March 15, major league baseball informed minor league players that they should “return to their offseason residences [from their teams’ Spring Training facilities in Arizona or Florida] to the extent practical.” Exceptions would exist for players rehabilitating injuries or for those who would return to a “high-risk location.”
Hungry Like a Certain Former Minor Leaguer
To that last end, one former minor leaguer used his newly-formed organization to give $200 to a Venezuelan minor leaguer whose team provided him an airline ticket to Caracas but no money for the seven-hour taxi ride from the airport to his hometown.
Jeremy Wolf never got a chance to pull in the coveted six figures, or more, of a major leaguer. The native Arizonian was selected by the New York Mets as an outfielder in the 31st round of the 2016 draft. Sixteen months later, he was released and quickly discovered an avenue for those such as himself.
Jeremy is the co-founder and executive director of More Than Baseball, a non-profit whose mission to help minor leaguers is simply, “We refuse to allow any ballplayers go to bed hungry and wake up on an air mattress only to play in front of thousands of paying fans per night.”
And, that’s on the days where everything is on an even playing field, where something called social distancing isn’t even a thing. Now, with baseball summarily ejected from the schedule, minor leaguers are faced with the struggle to eat and left with elbowing past desperate shoppers mindlessly hoarding Charmin four-packs.
“It’s the same regurgitation every year,” Wolf told the LA Times in mid-March, with the exact amount of exasperation as he should have. “You can just copy and paste from year to year. But now, something like this is on a bigger scale,” referring to this global pandemic, and speaking for all minor league players: “I’m being forced home with no assistance from my team.”
Through More Than Baseball, Wolf and his co-workers are dedicated to providing minor leaguers the assistance with housing, food, and equipment most of them need. Not all minor league ballplayers receive a multi-million dollar deal when signing their post-draft contract.
Per the Times, “According to Garrett Broshuis, an attorney and former minor league player [in the San Francisco Giants’ system, 2004-2009], the minor leaguers may [now] be ineligible to collect unemployment insurance because they remain under contract to their teams — and thus employed by a business, even if that business is shut down.”
“If it’s a couple weeks, fine, we can scrape by and handle this,” an unidentified Washington Nationals minor league player told the Washington Post just before leaving their W Palm Beach spring camp (the same facility used by the Houston Astros, FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches).
“But if it gets to be a month, two months, you could see guys quit because they just have to do something else to support themselves. That’s my biggest worry, that this isn’t sustainable.”
Spring Moonlighting For the Boys of Summer
Not unlike teachers, who experience an “offseason” of their own every summer and take on at least one temporary job, many MiLB players take other jobs in the winter to sock away for their spring room and board.
Astros’ pitcher Cy Sneed, for example, takes a classroom job as a substitute teacher in his offseason home of Kenai, Alaska to help fill out his annual salary of the MLB minimum ($555,000 last season). Sneed, who made his MLB debut in 2019, has been subbing and even tutoring (at Alaska Christian College) for three years, now.
Astros’ farmhand, 22-year-old Jordan Brewer is back living with his parents in Michigan awaiting word on what’s next regarding the minor league season and his assignment. Updates are few, ever-changing, and far between. Brewer managed to sock away his $500,000 signing bonus and invested it with the help of a financial advisor.
“I just put all this money away; I don’t want to touch it,” Brewer recently lamented to the Houston Chronicle. “At this point, I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I’m going to have to take out some money. And God knows how much I’m going to have to take out. That’s the scary part.”
Money Morass
Microscopic minor league salaries have been hotly debated and decried for decades. In 2020, the minimum weekly salary for a Class AAA player is slated to be $502. For rookie ball and Class A, $290 a week.
Raises will go into effect for the 2021 season across all minor league levels, but many players, nevertheless, will struggle to find offseason supplemental income. Throw in a worldwide pandemic, and the stakes not only become higher but the future seems to have a thick gauze of uncertainty thrown over it.
Where many minor league players might, in normal times, look for work to supplement their income as they do every year, these are the weeks they’re expected to be training for a season that may never come.
Add to that the number of stores and businesses to which they’d be applying are closed until further notice, depending on virus-related state and local declarations of closures.
And, even if someone hired them, their employers would be aware of a possible short-lived tenure, based on a possible quick return of baseball in a best-case scenario.
Just Under the Wire
Assistance for minor leaguers came through recently from Major League Baseball itself, which, in more normal times, takes in an estimated $11 billion annually.
MLB announced March 19 a compensation plan for the sport’s minor leaguers. Players will receive a lump sum “equal to the allowances that would have been paid through April 8,” according to the league-wide announcement. That sum is reportedly at least $400 a week for most teams’ minor league players, and teams may exceed that figure, if desired.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB staff remain in consultation with its franchises on an industry-wide plan for minor league compensation that would take it beyond April 8.
As for MLB and the players’ union (MLBPA), an updated agreement was announced March 27, regarding service time issues for major leaguers and the freeze of all transactions.
As for the annual first year player draft, MLB has reserved the right to “move the 2020 Draft past its currently scheduled date of June 10, but no later than July 20. The Draft can also be reduced to a minimum of five rounds, though MLB can choose to have anywhere from five to 40 rounds.
“MLB will have the right to run a combine for amateur players in both 2020 and 2021 if the league determines it makes sense to do so.”
Passing the Ball Cap
What benefits the big boys is currently unavailable for minor league players… a union. Short of people getting creative to reach out, like Jeremy Wolf’s More Than Baseball, those yearning for a spot on a big league roster have few, if any advocates.
For now, though, there is Emily Waldon’s Twitter account, offering job-finding and other ideas for players, and an “Adopt a Minor League Player” program with which Wolf’s organization works.
There’s also a GoFundMe account set up by pitcher Eric Sim, a self-professed former minor league “nobody” [2014 and 2015 with two Giants Class A teams], and another GoFundMe account set up by an unidentified support group of current minor league players based in Pennsylvania.
Campus Unrest?
Even before they’re minor league ballplayers, though, college and high school players with a dream of baseball glory rely upon the MLB Draft for their ticket to play for pay.
Major League Baseball, according to the Associated Press, had been considering forgoing its 2020 amateur draft (before their most recent March 27 announcement) and there was even talk of putting off the next international signing period (scheduled for July 2 through June 15, 2021).
Now, the start of the international signing period may be delayed “from July 2 to as late as January 15, 2021, while next year’s international signing period can also be pushed back. Teams will also not be allowed to trade Draft picks or international bonus slots in 2020 or 2021,” according to the new agreement.