Comments on: Improve Minor League Pay

By: Milwaukee - Baseball Prospectus

Milwaukee - Baseball Prospectus — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 14:05:12 +0000

[…] Related Reading: Player Perspective: Minor League Pay Improve Minor League Pay […]

By: 314carpenter

314carpenter — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 20:38:26 +0000

There are no rules stating what maximum salary a minor league baseball player can earn. The contract states what the minimum and maximum rates are. These are minimum rates. There is no rule stating a team cannot pay a player over the rates in the contract.

By: Hoopster007

Hoopster007 — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 16:40:34 +0000

A few people best me to the punch. It doesn’t happen because it would lead to big money teams paying more and players wanting to get drafted by certain teams and holding out in others because they don’t get the same compensation. It would turn into a money battle just as in MLB. Doubt the teams want to deal with salary battles at minor league levels.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 07:02:55 +0000

Fair point. I guess I was misusing that phrase to mean a way to gain an advantage. In the past the Brewers have not been on the leading edge of things (analytics springs readily to mind) that create a temporary advantage for an otherwise disadvantaged team. Is there potential for this to create an advantage? If so, how large? Is this more a 5 win thing or a 2 run thing, in your opinion?

By: Nicholas Zettel

Nicholas Zettel — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 18:57:17 +0000

It’s not a market inefficiency, it’s exploitation of labor pure and simple. It’s low cost by design, not by mistake (which would be an “inefficiency”). It will be interesting to see how teams respond as this issue creates more noise.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 16:31:33 +0000

Is this the new market inefficiency? If so, will this lead to a spending arms race in the minors? What do you project the lag time to be for such an arms race? This is fascinating, thrilling future for the Brewers (although the draft is not the most important part of rebuilding) if they can make headway here.

By: ZV

ZV — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:06:09 +0000

I definitely don’t have an issue with that either. What I was trying to say is that whatever level the Brewers can exploit this at, big market teams can exploit it 2x or 3x or 100x more. Which makes me wonder whether there is some fine print somewhere that keeps this from happening, since MLB is so concerned with competitive balance, etc.

By: Nicholas Zettel

Nicholas Zettel — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 11:54:59 +0000

That sounds like something the Brewers should exploit. I don’t see any issue paying players $100,000 in the minors of a $9 billion industry.

By: Milwaukee Brewers Untapped: Prospects Shining Bright In Rebuild

Milwaukee Brewers Untapped: Prospects Shining Bright In Rebuild — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 21:03:19 +0000

[…] L of BP Milwaukee also discussed the minors and the harsh realities of being a […]

By: ZV

ZV — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 19:09:40 +0000

To play devil’s advocate….what’s to stop the Yankees/Dodgers from paying all their farmhands $100k/year? Suddenly the draft bonus allotment doesn’t really matter to them. All the highly-rated players who get drafted later and would normally choose not to sign are now signing left and right…