As Money Squabbles Delay M.L.B., Many Workers ‘Just Get Steam-Rolled’

Like thousands of minor league baseball players, Zack Kelly knew May 31 was an important date. With professional baseball on pause because of the pandemic, M.L.B. had ensured minor leaguers would be paid $400 a week through the end of the month — and Kelly had a hunch that some players would be released as that expiration date approached.

He just didn’t think he would be one of them. Kelly, a right-handed pitcher, wasn’t a first-round pick or a notable prospect, but he was progressing steadily through the Los Angeles Angels’ farm system. Last season, at 24, he performed solidly at Class AA Mobile, a level where players typically earn about $9,300 a season. An elbow injury during spring training slowed him and he was awaiting surgery, but Kelly was looking forward to returning to the mound.

Then came the news on May 29 that he was among the 39 minor league players released by the Angels.

“It’s kind of frustrating because I felt like I had a career that wasn’t worthy of getting released at this point,” he said.

Much of the baseball world has been focused on the bitter back-and-forth between M.L.B. and the major-league players’ union as they try to hash out their differences on pay in order to play some semblance of a season in 2020. But as M.L.B.’s revenue has dried up significantly with the game on pause, much of the financial pain has also been felt by the vast constellation of club employees, minor league players and stadium workers who depend on the sport for their livelihood.

Unlike the big-league players fighting to preserve their salaries, much of that work force lacks a union, or has a much smaller safety net.

“Sports are really a microcosm of society in a lot of ways, and one being that groups of workers who lack representation just get steam-rolled when things like this happen,” said Garrett Broshuis, a former minor league pitcher who is now a lawyer and has been leading a class-action lawsuit against M.L.B. teams over minor league wages since 2014.

\"The — The Oakland Athletics originally planned to end payments to their minor league players in June, but their owner reversed course after facing public backlash.Credit...Ben Margot/Associated Press

On March 31, M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the stipends for roughly 8,000 minor league players would continue until May 31 or until the start of their season, whichever came first.

Three weeks later, Manfred sent a memo to the nearly 9,000 team employees governed by the uniform employee contract — which includes major and minor league coaches, scouts, trainers and some front office staffers — telling them that their contracts would be suspended as of May 1 because of the national emergency and lack of revenue. This gave teams the authority to enact furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs.

Most clubs committed to paying their employees through May. But their plans diverged abruptly beginning June 1.

With the minor league season unlikely to happen this year, each M.L.B. organization had to decide individually whether to continue the weekly stipend to their 200-plus minor league players. All did so, besides a holdout from the Oakland Athletics — who reversed course last week after widespread criticism.

Owner John Fisher issued an apology. “I concluded I’d made a mistake,” Fisher told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In an industry where team owners are billionaires and the league itself took in more than $10 billion in revenue last year, some clubs have drawn praise for supporting their workers, while others have been denounced for doing much less.

The Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals, for example, guaranteed employment and full salaries to their baseball operations employees for at least June. (The White Sox even committed to paying their released minor league players this month.) The Kansas City Royals and Twins pledged not to release any minor leaguers. But some teams, including big-market clubs like the Los Angeles Angels and the Athletics, slashed their costs.

Royals General Manager Dayton Moore, who took a pay cut to help prevent layoffs, noted that even players who peak at low levels of the minor leagues help contribute to the long-term growth of the sport. “Those individuals go back into their communities and teach the game, work in academies, are JUCO coaches, college coaches, scouts, coaches in pro baseball,” Moore told reporters.

Normally, each major-league franchise releases about two dozen minor league players during the spring, according to numbers tallied by Baseball America. The numbers appear to be higher this year — the Arizona Diamondbacks recently released at least 62 players, and the Yankees cut 45. The lack of minor league games wasn’t the only factor: New rules to go along with this year’s reduced, five-round draft and the prospect of M.L.B. cutting at least 40 minor league teams next season have also led some teams to cut more aggressively.

“I feel for some of those guys,” said Kelly, adding that the Angels’ minor league players released were a mix of experienced, young and injured. He added: “It’s unfortunate and it stinks that it has to come down to a financially based motive.”

The Angels — owned by Arte Moreno, who has an estimated net worth of over $3 billion — implemented some of the most drastic cost-cutting of any M.L.B. team. They have released over 50 minor league players since March and instituted furloughs that gutted nearly every department of the organization, including trimming their amateur scouting group days before the draft began Wednesday.

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Arte Moreno, the owner of the Los Angeles Angels.Credit...Chris Carlson/Associated Press

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Dayton Moore, the Kansas City Royals’ general manager.Credit...Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

The Angels said they had donated $1 million to an employee relief fund. According to details of the program sent to employees, they could apply for an immediate one-time $500 grant or submit a more detailed application for a needs-based grant.

“We, like businesses throughout the United States, are making difficult decisions to protect our long-term stability,” Angels spokeswoman Marie Garvey said in a statement in late May.

Up the highway in Los Angeles, the Dodgers, owned by the billionaire Mark Walter, implemented a tiered system of pay cuts to avoid furloughs and layoffs. Full-time employees making at least $75,000 a year saw a reduction, while those making more had their pay cut by up to 35 percent.

Front office employees and minor league players aren’t represented by unions, leaving them up to the whims of their employers. Many stadium workers have unions, but they are subcontracted hourly workers and have had mixed results getting aid from teams.

Major league players, on the other hand, agreed in March to be paid only for games played, and their union has resisted owners’ calls for deeper cuts.

While no decision has been made on the length of a potential 2020 major-league season, M.L.B. has told the players’ union that teams would lose an average of $640,000 per game over an 82-game campaign played in empty stadiums if players were paid their full, prorated salaries, according to an Associated Press report last month — though the union is skeptical of the league’s accounting and has requested financial documents.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

Updated June 12, 2020
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  Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.
- Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
  
  So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
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  A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.
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  The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.
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  States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.
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  If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.
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David Carter, a professor of sports business at U.S.C.’s Marshall School of Business, said that while owners are indeed wealthy, they “aren’t necessarily liquid the way you or I might think a billionaire is.” Many owners are less concerned about yearly losses than they are with growing their team’s valuations so that they can net large profits from a later sale.

Fewer workers are needed with no games happening, of course, but Carter argued that owners — and major-league players — are not sympathetic figures in the current economic climate, with more than 20 million people unemployed in the United States.

“That’s probably been the single area where there’s been bad public relations, bad messaging and ownership of the issue with franchise owners that have not come across very strong because they are perceived as this really elite business crowd,” he said. “You have people who are relying on minimum wage and that job at the arena as their second position to help put food on the table, and now they’re getting cut back — but, ‘Wait a minute, you’re still C.E.O. of what company?’”

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David Price committed to giving money to the Dodgers’ minor league players while they went without salaries. Credit...Gregory Bull/Associated Press

As in other industries, some organizations have stepped in to help minor league players and fill the void left by team owners. Organizations such as More Than Baseball, Adopt a Minor Leaguer and Advocates for Minor Leaguers have helped players financially or advised them on filing for unemployment benefits.

And some major leaguers, including David Price of the Dodgers and Sean Doolittle of the Washington Nationals, have led efforts to donate money to minor leaguer players.

Kelly, now without income from the Angels and with a monthslong rehabilitation ahead after his upcoming elbow surgery, was unsure how much time he could dedicate to his side gig, giving baseball lessons. Normally, he said, that netted him “a couple hundred bucks every month” to help during the season.

Kelly, who received a $500 bonus when he signed with the Athletics as an undrafted free agent in 2017 before landing with the Angels, said he was grateful that his wife had a stable job in health care to support them. He said the Angels would be paying for his medical costs through workers’ compensation.

As he talked by phone recently from his home in South Carolina, Kelly said he felt bad for his former coaches in the Angels farm system, many of whom have been furloughed and can’t leave for jobs elsewhere. This pandemic, he said, has shown which teams prioritize their employees and players.

“That’s going to have an effect for years to come,” he said, “especially if I’m a free agent going into the draft soon and I’m thinking Team A has invested in everybody on staff, and that speaks a lot more than somebody else who cut everybody for a couple thousand dollars.”