The sinews of war for players on the sidelines of the new collective agreement is to ensure that young players are better paid. Raising the minimum wage and offering a pool of money to the best performing players who are not yet entitled to arbitration is at the heart of the priorities.
That said, even though MLB openly says it wants to pay them more, it doesn’t do much. The offers are ridiculous and the young players feel left out.
And to prove its bad faith, the MLB goes even further: it no longer wants to pay minor players during training camp.
According to Evan Drellich, MLB thinks it’s expensive enough to bring them to camp and paying them extra isn’t worth it for the teams.
MLB argues for minor leaguers to stay unpaid in spring training: “It is the players that obtain the greater benefit from the training opportunities that they are afforded than the clubs, who actually just incur the cost of having to provide that training” https://t.co/md2BqNjr0X
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) February 12, 2022
According to them, the players extract more than the teams… but the young people work anyway. It’s ridiculous.
Rob Manfred, who said there will be no players from the minors to replace the guys from the Majors at training camp, thus demonstrates his real intentions: he doesn’t care about young people.
Remember that yes, the clubs must now pay for the accommodation of the players of the minors… but that the players are afraid to see the clubs paying them makeshift accommodation.
Major League Baseball doesn’t give a damn about young players, whether they’re in the minor leagues or in Major League Baseball. Such news must iNFLuence the negotiations, even if it concerns minors only.
Will young people be at the heart of the collective agreement proposal that the bosses will submit to the players this afternoon? That remains to be seen.
But what that tells me is that the negotiations will indeed be long.
