Jump to content

Manfred: If MiLB Players Get Raise, Teams will Be Folded


weams

Recommended Posts

Those same minor leaguers make it possible for the "stars" to actually be seasoned and make their way up the ladder. Without them, they'd be heaping messes in the majors.

I mean, minor league baseball isn't as bad as college sports. College sports is the biggest joke in sports. Either pay the players or don't allow the colleges to make money off of them.

Almost all high-level amateur sports are perpetuating massive lies. Pre-1990 Olympics, US colleges. The people running the show live like oil tycoons while patiently explaining to the lower castes the beauty and purity of playing a sport without the corrupting influence of money. I've enjoyed many a Virginia Tech game, but I get the absurdity of the situation where Frank Beamer easily made the most money of any employee in the state of Virginia ($5M+ a year) while some of his players get a $20k scholarship and his celebrated walk-ons pay their own way while fighting tooth-and-nail for that $20k. And they're eviscerated if they sell an autograph for $20.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 266
  • Created
  • Last Reply
It is supply and demand. No one is paying big tv contracts to watch minor league players. Major league players have leverage to get the big bucks because they are the best of the best. Just about all of the players in the minors either got a free college education or had the chance to get one. Most of us mere mortals never get that opportunity. They choose to chase the dream. If you are Manny Machado then you don't spend a whole lot of time eating Subway (setting aside his signing bonus).

I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, but the bolded statement isn't really true. What percentage of minor leaguers are from foreign countries, mostly the Caribbean and Central America? 40%? Almost all of them signed as free agents at 16-18, didn't finish high school, got maybe a few $thousand as a bonus, make $1500/month, and their education here consists of a class of English As a Second Language.

But nobody's putting a gun to their heads. A tiny chance and a barely subsistence level salary is better than nothing back home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Those same minor leaguers make it possible for the "stars" to actually be seasoned and make their way up the ladder. Without them, they'd be heaping messes in the majors.

It didn't have to be this way, prior to WWII most affiliated minor league systems were loose agreements with a couple teams. Only a few teams like the Cardinals had started assembling vast hoards of kids under their umbrella. Most minor leagues/teams were independent. Now... that didn't really change the conditions for players. Some guys in the PCL or the high minors made pretty good cash, maybe as much as some MLBers. But at least it wasn't dictated by the majors, with threats to shut down teams if players were paid the princely sum of 1/5th of the average US household wage*.

* Yes, the MLB owners/commish repeatedly said MLB would quickly die if players were allowed to become free agents and negotiate market salaries.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nobody is forcing the minor league players to play in the minors. No crime is being committed here. Manfred is not to blame. The players union should cap what major league players can make and then funnel more money down.

What a stupid argument. Because they're not forced, anything that happens is legal?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, and many minor leaguers should realize they aren't there to make a career of it but rather fillers for a season or two.

I remember a Bowie pitcher's girlfriend being so excited that her man was going to become a six year FA and be able to make some real money. It was funny for me at the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do minor leaguers qualify for food stamps or other gov't assistance for low-income workers? Earned income tax credit? Or does their classification somehow prevent that?

I would think public assistance is available to all who fall below an income threshold, are devoid of certain assets and are not incarcerated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some of the comments in this thread are very surprising. I can't believe anyone would or could believe MLB and argue to keep minor league pay at current levels. There are no reasonable justifications in my opinion.

I don't believe MLB. I just do not believe that MLB players will subsidize it and that owners will contract the minors if forced to increase. Like all free enterprises.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do minor leaguers qualify for food stamps or other gov't assistance for low-income workers? Earned income tax credit? Or does their classification somehow prevent that?

Not aliens on visa though. They would not qualify.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do minor leaguers qualify for food stamps or other gov't assistance for low-income workers? Earned income tax credit? Or does their classification somehow prevent that?

They would qualify for the earned income credit if they meant all the other requirements. It doesn't take into consideration your job classification.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some of the comments in this thread are very surprising. I can't believe anyone would or could believe MLB and argue to keep minor league pay at current levels. There are no reasonable justifications in my opinion.

All minor leaguers who wish to stay so can opt out of affiliated ball, play independent and negotiate whatever salaries their talents command in the market. They are still eligible to play MLB ball if their attention grab is great enough. It's not like they are banned for all time like it used to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would think public assistance is available to all who fall below an income threshold, are devoid of certain assets and are not incarcerated.

You can't show up at the park in your 24k gold and black super jacked one ton with the 5k spinners though.

2713df68ddc19e8ec3d76338f98a842c.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




  • Posts

    • The same thing was happening was MacDonald was the DC and when Wink was the DC, that makes me put most of the blame on Harbaugh 
    • dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.
  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...