Affiliated Signings: One Step Forward And Two Steps Back
Today, one of our authors explains his decision to stop cheering on the signings of unaffiliated players into the MLB system.
IBWAA members love to write about baseball. So much so, we've decided to create our own newsletter about it! Subscribe to Here's the Pitch to expand your love of baseball, discover new voices, and support independent writing. Original content six days a week, straight to your inbox and straight from the hearts of baseball fans.
Pregame Pepper - Major Exploitation of Minor League Players
More Perfect Union, a progressive non-profit news media organization, released this short video in September 2021, shedding light on the plight of many minor leaguers.
Leading Off
Examining Affiliated Signings
By Bill Thompson
One of the oddest practices found in the unaffiliated, specifically North American independent, baseball scene is the celebration of unaffiliated players signing minor league deals with Major League Baseball clubs. These signings are common and when you spend most of your time covering unaffiliated baseball chances are you’re going to come across said signings due to posts espousing happiness for the players being signed. I’ve come to believe we shouldn’t be celebrating these signings.
First things first, some groundwork.
In North American professional baseball, we’re talking America and Canada specifically in this instance, there are essentially two spheres of operation. Affiliated ball refers to MLB and any of their directly affiliated minor league clubs. Unaffiliated refers to independent leagues and their member ball clubs, some of which have ties to MLB but aren’t directly affiliated and thus are referred to as a partner. These unaffiliated leagues base a large part of their operation on getting their players either back or initially into affiliated baseball for the first time.
On the one hand, I understand the celebrations from the perspective of these players trying to get into MLB. For the overwhelming majority of unaffiliated players, it has been their lifeline dream to make the majors. Also, as professionals, it only makes sense that they would want to continue down a career path that will lead to MLB. From this perspective, I fully understand the urge to celebrate unaffiliated players signing minor league deals with MLB clubs.
Looking at it from another perspective I can’t help but feel gross anytime I’m scrolling through a social media timeline and read posts from people celebrating that “player X” has signed a minor league deal with “MLB team Y.”
I have celebrated in the past so I’m certainly not casting stones here, but what we are celebrating is a player signing a deal to work for poverty-level wages while being treated like absolute crap by their respective MLB organization. We’re happy that someone has signed on with a system that needs an organization like Adopt a Minor Leaguer to ensure that at least some minor league players get adequate meals, transportation, family care, etc. Not through their teams mind you but through the altruistic giving of others.
None of the above applies when players sign with non-MLB major leagues, such as Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan for example, or other unaffiliated leagues outside of the United States and Canada. I am genuinely happy when players sign with those leagues and teams because I know that they are getting paid a comfortable wage that they can support their lives. Knowing they are being taken care of by their ballclubs makes a world of difference and gives me no reason to feel gross or dirty for the situation they find themselves in while pursuing the career of being a professional baseball player.
As I said above, I understand the inclination to be happy when a player from the unaffiliated world signs an affiliated contract. At the same time, I don’t feel any longer like I can be happy for those players. I’m happy they are continuing to pursue their dream, but I can’t celebrate that they are having to put themselves in a position where they are being treated as less than human by organizations worth billions of dollars.
I don’t see any reason to celebrate a move from the North American unaffiliated world to MLB’s ranks where the player is making at best a lateral move and more than likely a backward move in terms of how they are treated. These are human beings we are talking about and I’ve made the decision to no longer celebrate their exploitation by MLB and its member clubs.
Bill Thompson is a father (human/feline/canine), husband, paramedic, socialist, and writer for the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and Off the Bench Baseball. He also is a freelance writer at various online and print publications and a member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America & Society for American Baseball Research.