Considering A Potential Con To Minor League Unionization
Today, one of our authors talks about how the progress of minor league baseball towards unionization may result in a negative impact on a facet of the minor leagues.
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 - Minor League Highlights
Leading Off
Minor League Unionization Could Have An Unforeseen Consequence
By Benjamin Chase
Last September, a vote taken by a number of minor league players certified the participation of minor league players in the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). This was seen as a monumental victory for minor league players, who have struggled to have an equal footing to their major league brethren in negotiating with MLB ownership since the advent of the MLBPA in 1966.
However, a major movement that has been underway for decades in the minor leagues is not fully complete, as much as many in MLB may like it to be.
Minor league teams were once the source of pride for their respective communities, owned by a local business owner or even by a conglomerate of members of the community. Major league teams controlled their complex-level teams, in other words, their teams in the Dominican Summer League and either the Florida complex or Arizona complex, whichever the team utilized. However, from that point forward in the development chain, teams were locally-owned clubs that had a partnership with the major league team that was renegotiated frequently.
Major league teams began to buy their full-season affiliates in the 1960s, but it was very rare until the early 2000s, as local ownership of a team allowed for the responsibility of upkeep on a stadium, employing gameday staff, and much of the more financial matters involved with the team to fall on the local ownership. MLB teams were allowed to force local ownership to continue to upgrade facilities simply to continue affiliate relationships, or another community could come along with a new stadium in a new location, ready to recruit a minor league affiliate to their town.
As teams began to invest more into the development of players in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the realization that more control of the entire path of development would be vital led to an uptick of MLB clubs purchasing their minor league affiliates.
When the league brought all of the Minor League Baseball headquarters from Florida under the MLB umbrella in New York and trimmed the minor leagues to 120 total teams, clipping off dozens of teams and abandoning those towns with teams along the way, many assumed this came with a significant investment into the minor leagues on behalf of MLB.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would have one believe that this is true.
"MLB will spend at least $1.03 billion in 2022 to operate the Minor League system," Manfred wrote in 2022. "MLB receives approximately $25 million in revenue from Minor League operators each year. As a result, the net subsidy MLB clubs provide to Minor League operations is over $1 billion."
The issue is that Manfred counts only the funds received from those local ownership groups to MLB, not the funds earned by team-owned clubs in revenue from the clubs that they own. That number also did not take into account the revenue from MiLB.tv subscribers, the minor league streaming service, or merchandise sales from the official Minor League Baseball store, which shares some revenue back to the clubs but also keeps a notable share.
Now, the MLBPA is sitting down with MLB to negotiate the first collective bargaining agreement, but there are notable members missing from the table: the local owners of minor league clubs.
The concessions in better facilities, better dining, and other things that will come from the CBA being negotiated for minor league players between MLB and MLBPA? Much of those costs are expected to be pushed onto the teams.
For those teams who own their affiliates, they will absorb those costs, and it will be considered part of added development costs. However, the ever-diminishing group of local owners may be further forced to submit to sale to MLB clubs as they will be required to upgrade their facilities to meet the conditions put forth in the negotiations between MLB and MLBPA without having a seat at those same negotiations.
Without having a voice, these owners could be forced into upgrading potentially already-struggling facilities without the support of the parent club simply due to the language put forth in the Player Development License (PDL) that all teams that wanted to continue operating starting in 2021, when the league cut 40 teams out of the minor leagues and gave teams to the 120 locations that would play by their rules.
That could lead to the parent club deeming an affiliate's facilities not adequate, the affiliate being found in default of the PDL, and a number of communities across the country losing their locally-owned ballclub.
Strong-arming the existence of the game across the country, more than whether or not a game is complete in two hours and thirty minutes, could be the undoing of Rob Manfred's version of MLB. Let's hope someone steps in before it comes to fruition.
While local ownership losing out is not a great thing, many have the idea that minor league players are going to be living high on the hog now that the union is in place and this CBA is being negotiated.
Check out tomorrow’s issue to find out why that’s not exactly the case and how you can help support the future stars of the game!
Benjamin Chase is a newspaper reporter in rural South Dakota with an immense love for baseball, especially player development, from the amateur game all the way through the minor leagues. He is the co-host of the Pallazzo Podcasts prospect show each week and his baseball writing can be found on Rotoballer, among other sites.