A Plan to Support Minor League Teams, At Some Level
/by Rob Manfred
You can rest assured that all of us at Major League Baseball appreciate the role that Minor League Baseball plays in small communities across the country, offering families and friends a place where they can enjoy America’s pastime.
Negotiations with Minor League Baseball are at a very early stage. No one can predict what the agreement will look like at this point. When these discussions became public, MLB had only held three negotiating sessions with Minor League Baseball. In breach of an explicit confidentiality commitment, certain Minor League Baseball officials have disseminated an inaccurate and distorted account of our conversations in an effort to create pressure on Major League Baseball. This tactic has undermined the trust necessary to successfully conclude any sort of negotiation.
I would like to take this opportunity to clear up the misconceptions circulated by some owners of Minor League Baseball teams, and to share with you goals for these negotiations.
1. Major League Baseball is committed to protecting baseball in communities across America, which is why we have subsidized Minor League operations at a rate of hundreds of millions of dollars per year over the past decade. We’ve also provided non-monetary resources, such as training for players and affiliations with Big League clubs. It is not Major League Baseball’s goal to eliminate any club in these negotiations. We have made clear to Minor League Baseball that we have a plan for every Minor League club to continue operations with some level of support from Major League Baseball.
2. The Minor Leagues have never served as a revenue source for Major League Baseball. We subsidize the Minor Leagues not because it is cost-effective, but because of our shared belief in baseball as a uniting force in communities across America. If Major League Baseball’s proposal was accepted, our annual subsidy for Minor League Baseball would not decrease. In fact, it would likely increase.
3. Maj or League Baseball’s goal for these negotiations is to improve working conditions for Minor League players and to protect baseball in local communities across America.
a. Improving Working Conditions: Minor League owners have underinvested in facilities, nutrition, training, mental health to the detriment of the players - all while raking in subsidies from the communities where they operate. Under Maj or League Baseball’s current proposal, player wages would increase between 70% - 100%. Working conditions would also improve by providing players with up-to-date facilities, access to modern health and nutrition services, reduced travel, higher quality hotels and clubhouse food, sleeper buses for long road trips, and more off days. Additionally, Minor League owners have relocated their teams with such frequency that players are subject to bus rides, often over 10 hours long, and Minor League clubs are now located in areas across the country from their Major League affiliates. We can’t afford to allow players to sacrifice their health, well-being and professional development just so that Minor League owners can make a profit by chasing the largest public subsidy available and cutting comers all to the detriment of the abandoned communities.
b. Protect Minor League Baseball: Minor League teams are generally independent businesses that decide independently of Maj or League Baseball whether or not to operate and where to locate their operations. Since 1990, 77 Minor League teams have relocated because their owners sought out better deals in other cities. Major League Baseball is working to protect baseball in local communities across the country by ensuring that there is a plan in place for every minor league club and discouraging Minor League owners from continuing to abandon their communities in search of profit.
4. We have suggested to Minor League Baseball that the best way to deal with these serious issues is to agree on a fair allocation of increased costs, which would be used to modernize facilities and boost working conditions for players. Minor League Baseball, which on the whole is a profitable business, has informed us that rather than bear any portion of the contemplated cost increases they would prefer to eliminate franchises that everyone agrees are problematic. Confronted with this position, we suggested to Minor League Baseball a plan that preserved the status quo for the majority of affiliates and provided the remaining affiliates with the opportunity to continue to operate with a different and lower subsidy from Major League Baseball.
In closing, I want to emphasize that I remain committed to a good faith negotiation with Minor League Baseball that addresses the serious concerns mentioned above. I am more than open to solutions that involve professional baseball continuing in all of its current locations. To achieve such a result, however, Minor League Baseball must return to the negotiating table and make a similar good faith commitment. I hope you will encourage the Minor League operators in Connecticut to tell their representatives to cease the unproductive campaign of misinformation and commit to negotiating in good faith. Such encouragement will help protect Minor League Baseball in Connecticut.
Robert D. Manfred Jr. is the Commissioner of Baseball. This letter was sent by Manfred to Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont on December 17, 2019, in response to correspondence from the Governor on December 2.
