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


weams

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Not if they played in unaffiliated ball, unless you are only counting hour of required attendance. I do think everyone deserves a living wage. Maybe they should just be declared semi pro until a certain level. It is mostly a dream and a hobby for some very talented young men. And a very big dream.

I want to beat my drum The one I always beat. This is not a career path. This is not for any of us. This is not something to aspire for. There are 700 paying jobs on field among 7 billion potential candidates. This is like saying "I want to train hard to be Michael Jackson."

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I want to beat my drum The one I always beat. This is not a career path. This is not for any of us. This is not something to aspire for. There are 700 paying jobs on field among 7 billion potential candidates. This is like saying "I want to train hard to be Michael Jackson."

It is a field for young males without families.

The setup is designed so that you can't get comfortable playing in the lower levels.

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I hate how the minor leagues work for draft picks because they are often not a meritocracy, and are no where close to a free market, so a team can make you toil away in crappy conditions and you can do absolutely nothing about it. See: Ryan Howard.

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It is a field for young males without families.

The setup is designed so that you can't get comfortable playing in the lower levels.

You will never feed a family playing covers at the pub on Friday and Saturday either.

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I hate how the minor leagues work for draft picks because they are often not a meritocracy, and are no where close to a free market, so a team can make you toil away in crappy conditions and you can do absolutely nothing about it. See: Ryan Howard.

He would have been a huge draw in the Israeli league.

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Except that there are 75 or 100 independent teams that currently do that right now, the only difference being that they pay the 20 on-field guys in rolls of quarters. Somehow the Pecos League has existed for 3-4 years in smallish towns in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado with players probably a half step above local adult men's leagues and parks that (from the web site) look like they'd seat 2500 mainly on long benches like you'd see at a county fair. The business model must make some level of sense unless they have a bunch of rich guys doing this as a hobby.

That's undoubtedly true. My comment (as a small business owner myself) is that there is no way the theoretical league you suggested would exist if the revenue-to-wages (and just player wages; not counting all other staff) was 2:1. Payroll taxes alone would bring the on-field labor costs up to around $3m. With only $5m in revenue, your losses would be tremendous.

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All this complaining about salaries yet there is no shortage of young men willing to give it a try. The honest truth is most players are nothing more than filler to help give the true prospects a chance to develop their skills in order to become major league players.

The pay sucks, no doubt, but it's still something that most young baseball players would still love to do. The guys who retire and go off into the real world because the pay stinks, give the next group of young baseball players an opportunity. It's a cycle that always provides opportunity for young talented baseball players. At the end of the day, why should anyone force an industry to pay more for something that there are a long line of young men willing to do?

I know that's not the popular position to have, and I'm not against guys getting more money if they can get it, but at the end of the day, this isn't a job that you can start applying minimum wage policies to. If that happens, all teams have to do is say they are only paying for pregame and playing time and then they can say if you didn't play you don't get paid. All of that of course is ridiculous. This is simple supply and demand. There is a large supply of young men willing to play organized professional baseball even if the pay stinks.

As long as there is a chance for a pot of gold at the end of their journey, many young men are going to continue to play professional baseball regardless of their lack of pay. No one forces them to do so and if they quit, there are 10 more guys ready to take their place. Unfortunately those are the cold hard facts.

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I've always been against any minimum wage anywhere. If I want my house painted and I'm willing to pay $1 an hour, and you want to paint my house for $1 an hour, why should that be outlawed?

Read the "Grapes of Wrath" and get back to us.

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