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MLB to Provide Housing to MiLB Players


In what very well may be the opening salvo for the upcoming CBA talks, multiple outlets are reporting that MLB plans to announce the requirement of teams to provide housing to minor-leaguers, beginning in 2022.

Like many things MLB and MiLB and its financial dealings, details are sketchy. Whether the requirement will mean housing stipends or if teams plan to build facilities (☝🏼ahem:☝🏼) is not clear. Regardless, there is joy in certain parts of Mudville:

No doubt the move is in response to multiple stories of the often squalid living conditions of minor-leaguers this past summer, exacerbated by the current pandemic on two fronts: (1) the protocols that forbid host families from housing players* (2) rising rents, particularly in larger cities as reported by Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic.
* Given the transmission/vaccination rates where many affiliates are located, this decision proved to be quite prudent

Perhaps ironically, given the organization’s influence in the restructuring of the minors, credit should be given to the Houston Astros, which reportedly provided furnished housing this past season. Perhaps that demonstrated that the cost was manageable. That it might also be the right thing to do could just be a happy coincidence.

As noted in the lede, this could be a preemptive move for MLB as the CBA expires and the threat of a strike is easily the greatest since 1994. Talk of organizing the minor-leaguers has increased, perhaps to the point where MLB sees this as an actual possibility.

14 Commments

  1. MLB must be feeling great pressure to do this. Doing the right thing doesn’t come naturally to the owners as they are enjoying their $10+ billion dollar a year revenues and the serfs searching for scraps. Long overdue.

    1. Systems crashing ?
      Fed baseball report on Noll keeps crashing when I try and pull it up.
      I am sure the same words Mark Z will use in a write up

      Cluff , Noll , ( Marincanz and Daily lumped together ) numerous minor league free agent IFs signed last winter who could hit the Beltway numbers
      No wonder attention given to Barley , Alu , Dunn, Baker and several kids invited to instructs
      Holes to fill in minor league free agent signings this winter

  2. In Harrisburg, players were allowed to stay with host families starting late May/early June if both the player and family were fully vaccinated. I think housing will be provided at the lower levels and stipends at AA/AAA. Big difference between young single guys and older ones with wife and children.

    1. I had read multiple times that the 1st time that the players get treated like human beings is when they get to AA.

  3. Incredible that a billion dollar industry fought tooth and nail to prevent spending a few million dollars on the same minor leaguers who eventually provide it with billions of dollars in cost savings due to cost controls.

    Never mind that all of this could have been avoided if MLB just followed the law and paid its employees minimum wage (imagine how many multitudes more the MLB spent in lobbying and legal retainer fees to get the SAP Act passed), or better yet, a living wage.

    Hopefully we will get another headline soon “MLB to Provide Food to indentured servants MiLB Players”

  4. I don’t think the upcoming CBA had much to do with it, other than to provide public window dressing for the owners’ positions contra the MLBPA, which has shown little concern with minor leaguers. The MLBPA concerns itself with current and former MLB guys.

    The owners also should provide their minor leaguers with a reasonable wage, which would be only a tiny percentage of what they pay in their MLB contracts.

    1. It would cost each team roughly $6m to pay each and every minor leaguer $50,000 per year.

      Meanwhile, we paid Stephen Strasburg $7m per start this past season.

    2. That nuance will be lost on 90% of the general public, which will see this as more than “window dressing” too. To Will’s point, paying the players enough so they don’t *have* to work off-season jobs wouldn’t be expensive.

  5. We must truly be between AFL , instructs in WPB and the winter meetings .
    Mark Z and Patrick @ fed baseball have covered most of the prospects worth talking about .
    Now we’ll just have to talk about
    Other themes until December .

    1. Gilbert Lara must be a kid that Darnell Coles works with in spring camp
      Three levels less than 300 ABs , 102 whiffs , 6 HRs and 40 some RBIs.
      About to turn in which direction ? Upward projection ?

      1. I recall reading in the recent past that a kid playing @ AA was making what an UPS driver might have made circa some year in the past

  6. I was told the beerman in HBG made more per hour than the players.
    These guys are living below the poverty line and let’s hope more changes are made soon!

    1. Would not surprise me about beer man wages
      .
      Let’s hope the club adds some interesting new players in the upper levels .
      Some of the guys brought in within the last season and a half just don’t cut the mustard

  7. Quietly a name not spoken before all the trade deadline kids is Cole Freeman
    Versatile AA guy who raked @ .267.

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