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MLB Backing Legislation To Exempt Minor League Players From Florida Wage Law

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Major League Baseball is backing proposed legislation in Florida that would exempt minor league players from the state’s minimum wage provisions, according to a report from Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents. According to Garcia, the bill was put in front of the Florida legislature two weeks ago. It is not yet known whether it will pass the legislature and, if it does, receive the necessary approval from governor Ron DeSantis.

MLB provided a statement to both Garcia and Evan Drellich of the Athletic. The league said its intention “is merely to remove all doubt and explicitly clarify the existing Florida law, which already has stated since the early 2000’s that it follows the federal wage and hour regulations and exemptions. It serves nobody for minor league players to be treated like clock-punching workers who can only access the facilities at managed, scheduled times.”

Whether Florida’s state provision mirrors federal law matters because minor leaguers were explicitly exempted from federal minimum wage protection back in 2018. The league-backed “Save America’s Pastime Act,” passed as part of a much broader omnibus spending bill, firmly carved out players from federal minimum wage support. That act does not itself carve out an exemption from state wage protections, but MLB is pushing for a change in the wording of the Florida statute that would make clear that Florida’s provision follows the federal law.

Even if statutory wage protections were lifted, minor league players would not be without recourse in their push for higher pay. They agreed to unionize last year, with the MLB Players Association taking the lead role in negotiating the inaugural collective bargaining agreement for minor leaguers. Wages are a mandatory subject of collective bargaining. Drellich notes that collectively bargained minimum wages, once agreed upon in the still-pending minor league CBA, are likely to land higher than state laws require anyhow.

That’d perhaps make MLB’s desire for exemption from state wage protection a moot point. It’s possible exemption could give the league more leverage in CBA negotiations, although a league spokesperson told both Garcia and Drellich their efforts are “not about collective bargaining.” Rather, Drellich suggests the efforts could be better seen as protection against potential future lawsuits after the league was dealt a defeat in a California court last year.

State wage provisions were the basis for a minor league class action lawsuit that was decided upon last spring. In March, a California district court judge rejected MLB’s argument that minor leaguers were seasonal employees exempted from minimum wage protections. That judgment was justified on Arizona and Florida law. As part of that litigation, the court rejected a league argument that the “Save America’s Pastime Act” should have automatically exempted players from Florida’s state protections based on a reading of the Florida statute — one which the legislature is now considering amending in light of the court’s decision.

That ruling resulted in the awarding of back pay for previous unpaid work in Spring Training. A trial to determine the extent of damages was set for the start of June but the sides agreed to a $185MM settlement a couple weeks before it was set to get underway. That officially resolved litigation that had lasted nearly a decade.

The settlement lifted a league prohibition on teams paying minor leaguers for Spring Training work, though it did not impose any requirements on clubs to do so. That’s sure to be a discussion point in forthcoming CBA negotiations. Those began in November. MLBPA executive director Tony Clark told Drellich last week the minor leagues were expected to run as scheduled even if no agreement is in place by Opening Day.

Quick Hits: Twins, Rays, Minor League CBA

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The Twins announced that they have hired Nick Paparesta to be the club’s head athletic trainer. Paparesta has spent the previous 12 years in the same role for the Athletics. Prior to that, he spent five years with the Rays and 11 years with Cleveland.

A new head athletic trainer usually wouldn’t be especially noteworthy, but there are a couple of reasons to think this could be an impactful move for Minnesota. Reporting on the vacancy last week, La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune pointed out that there’s been a large amount of turnover in the club’s strength and conditioning departments, including having three different head trainers since 2016.

Also, the Twins were leading the AL Central for much of 2022 before a rash of injuries dragged them down to a 78-84 finish. While the training staff can’t be reasonably blamed for every health issue that pops up, any improvement in that department could have big ramifications for the club. If Paparesta can provide some stability to the department, it could help the Twins on the field, especially with a roster that features some players with injury concerns, such as Byron Buxton, Tyler Mahle, Jorge Polanco, Royce Lewis and others.

Some other notes from around the league…

  • The Tigers recently hired Rob Metzler to be their assistant general manager, plucking him from the Rays organization. Since Metzler had been working as senior director of amateur scouting for Tampa, that left them with a vacancy in their scouting department. The Rays turned inward to replace Metzler, as Marc Topkin of the Tampa Times reports that they promoted Chuck Ricci to director of amateur scouting. Ricci has spent the past nine seasons as national crosschecker for the Rays and has evidently impressed the organization enough to get a bump up the ladder. Additionally, David Hamlett was promoted to assistant director of amateur scouting. The Rays have earned a reputation for finding talented young players from various areas, something that is essential for their success as a franchise that typically doesn’t spend at high levels. Though the departure of Metzler will surely create challenges for them, the club will be hoping that Ricci and Hamlett can step up and fill the void.
  • In recent months, the Major League Baseball Players Association sought to represent minor league players in negotiations with the league, an effort that ultimately proved successful. The arrangement became official in mid-September, with an arbiter validating the organization efforts of the union and the league agreeing to recognize the MLBPA as the bargaining representatives for minor leaguers. It was reported around that time that minor leaguers would be negotiating a separate agreement to the one that affects major leaguers, and Evan Drellich of The Athletic reports that those talks have now begun. As the recent MLB CBA negotiations showed, these situations can drag on for months, so it’s unclear how long this agreement will take. It might also prove to be even more challenging since these are uncharted waters, with minor leaguers having never been unionized before. More details will surely emerge as the negotiations play out, but many minor league players have been vocal about dissatisfaction with various elements of their work environments, including housing and payment, among others.

MLBPA Representation Of Minor Leaguers Becomes Official

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The MLBPA’s efforts to represent minor leaguers have officially paid off, according to Evan Drellich of The Athletic and Jeff Passan of ESPN.

Just over two weeks ago, it was reported that the MLBPA had taken initial steps towards unionizing minor leaguers, with those players being asked to vote on designating the MLBPA as their collective bargaining representatives. About a week later, the MLBPA announced that a “significant” majority of minor leaguers have signed authorization cards in favor of the MLBPA creating a minor league bargaining unit, with the MLBPA requested that MLB recognize this effort. A few days later, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the league would indeed recognize as the bargaining representatives for minor leaguers. Today, an arbiter validated the card count with MLB then voluntarily recognizing the union.

MLBPA executive director Tony Clark released a statement on Twitter, which reads:

“I applaud this extraordinary group of young Players and welcome them to the MLBPA. This historic achievement required the right group of Players at the right moment to succeed. Minor leaguers have courageously seized that moment, and we look forward to improving their terms and conditions of employment through the process of good faith collective bargaining. I also want to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Harry Marino and the dedicated group he led at Advocates for Minor Leaguers, without whom this historic organizing campaign would not have been possible.”

Recent reporting revealed that every member of the Advocates for Minor Leaguers staff resigned and took on new jobs with the MLBPA. Membership in the union will now grow from 1200 to more than 5,000, though an MLBPA official told MLBTR last week the proposed unionization efforts would give minor leaguers their own separate bargaining unit under the MLBPA umbrella, adding that any minor league CBA would be negotiated independently of the Major League CBA that was completed earlier this year. Players in the rookie level Dominican Summer League will not automatically be included because it’s based outside the United States, but the MLBPA plans to bargain over DSL working conditions despite those players not officially joining the Association.

Congresspeople from both parties recently expressed an interest in reconsidering MLB’s antitrust exemption. Low rates of pay for minor leaguers has been one of many legislators’ critiques, but recognition of a union and signing a collective bargaining agreement with minor leaguers would take that issue outside the realm of antitrust law and into labor law territory.

Today’s news brings minor leaguers officially into a union for the first time in history, setting the stage for them to also negotiate the first ever CBA for minor leaguers. The various substandard working conditions of minor leaguers have become increasingly highlighted in recent years, with a focus on the low rates of pay and poor housing. There had been some small progress, with reporting in October of last year revealing that MLB was requiring teams to begin to provide housing for all MiLB players, something they were not previously required to do. In July, MLB paid $185MM to settle a lawsuit that began in 2014 related to low wages and minor league players not being paid for Spring Training. These issues, and any other issues minor leaguers may have, will now be addressed through collective bargaining between the union and the league. The MLBPA also recently joined the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which will likely impact minor leaguers more than their major league counterparts since the benefits of AFL-CIO programs are in areas such as mortgages and car purchases.

All told, it seems like significant changes for Minor League Baseball and its players could be coming over the horizon, though the exact nature of those changes won’t be known until the bargaining process begins in earnest.

MLB To Pay $185MM To Settle Class Action Minor League Suit

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Major League Baseball is set to pay $185MM to settle the class action lawsuit brought by minor league players nearly a decade ago, as Jeff Passan of ESPN was first to report. Evan Drellich of the Athletic adds (Twitter link) that the league will lift any “contractual prohibitions against (teams) paying minor league players wages” for work outside of regular season play. The agreement is pending final approval from the court.

It’s the culmination of a suit first filed in 2014. Among other aspects of minor league pay, the litigation was concerned with the process of unpaid spring training. MLB came under public fire for arguing for players to remind unpaid for Spring Training as recently as February. That proved unsuccessful, however. The following month, the trial court rejected the league’s argument that minor leaguers were seasonal employees exempted from minimum wage laws.

The case was set for trial on June 1, but the parties came to a settlement agreement in mid-May. Terms were unreported at the time, but the league has apparently agreed to dole out $185MM in backpay. Passan notes that more than $120MM of that figure will be distributed among the class of players involved (with the rest presumably going to court costs and attorneys fees). One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, former minor leaguer Garrett Broshuis, tells Drellich more than 20,000 players are expected to share those funds.

“This settlement is a monumental step for minor league players toward a fair and just compensation system,” Broshuis said (via Passan). “As a former minor league baseball player, I’ve seen first-hand the financial struggle players face while earning poverty-level wages — or no wages at all — in pursuit of their major league dream. For the better part of a decade, it has been my honor to help lead this fight and to shine a light on the unfair labor practices that have long plagued America’s pastime.”

MLB released a statement of its own. “We are only in the second year of a major overhaul of the 100-year-old player development system and have made great strides to improve the quality of life for minor league players,” a league spokesperson told Passan, referencing a 2021 uptick in minor league salaries and this season’s requirement for teams to provide housing to players. “We are proud that minor league players already receive significant benefits, including free housing, quality health care, multiple meals per day, college tuition assistance for those who wish to continue their education and over $450 million in annual signing bonuses for first-year players. We are pleased we were able to come to a mutually agreeable resolution but are unable to comment on the details until the agreement is formally approved by the Court.”

The proposed lifting of the ban on payment outside of regular season play, meanwhile, has the potential to impact countless of players moving forward. Whether and how many teams will begin to pay minor leaguers for things like Spring Training and instructional league is unclear. Nevertheless, the removal of the ban has to be viewed as a win for groups fighting for better pay for minor leaguers, most of whom are not part of the Major League Baseball Players Association and do not have a union of their own.

MLB Argues For Minor League Players To Remain Unpaid For Spring Training

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For the past two-plus months, the ongoing baseball narrative has been around the lockout and the attempts, or lack thereof, to work out a new collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association. However, the MLBPA only consists of players who are currently on a team’s 40-man roster, as well as those who became Major League free agents at the end of the 2021 season. Separate from that, there is a far larger batch of players who also have ongoing gripes with MLB: minor leaguers.

The challenging conditions faced by those in the minors have been the subjects of controversies recently, with many players voicing frustration over their insufficient salaries which require them to find other jobs in the offseason and/or crowd into cramped apartments during the season. The latter issue was the subject of reports in October that MLB will now require teams to provide housing for minor leaguers.

Although that is surely a welcome development for minor league players, there are still other improvements they are seeking to make. Evan Drellich of The Athletic reports on an ongoing legal faceoff that has MiLB players seeking to be compensated for spring training. As part of this lawsuit, which goes to trial June 1st, an MLB lawyer argued that the players should not be given monetary compensation because the training they receive is their payment, which they value at $2,200 per week. “This figure is an estimate of the costs plaintiffs would have had to incur had they attended a baseball prospecting camp instead of participating in the minor leagues,” is how the argument was framed by Denise Martin, senior vice president at NERA Economic Consulting.

The players’ side, of course, disagrees. “All of a sudden they aren’t employees during the time periods where we call it ‘training,’ even though they’re operating under the same employment contract that requires them to perform services, quote, ‘throughout the calendar year,’” said Garrett Broshuis, an attorney and former MiLB player himself.

The players have long argued that their modest compensation, even when they are paid, has knock-on effects on their diet, sleep, mental health and other areas of their lives, which limits their ability to live up to their potential as athletes. Spending a month at spring training without any pay at all surely only compounds those struggles. In the wake of the news about this lawsuit, one minor league player articulated that particular frustration on Twitter. “I wish I could go to the grocery store and pay with ’an opportunity’,” said Nick Kuzia, who pitched in Double-A and Triple-A for the Padres in 2021. “I think most places only accept US dollars. Will keep you updated.”

Triple-A Baseball Season Expanded To 150 Games

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Minor League Baseball announced this morning that the Triple-A schedule will be expanding from 144 to 150 games in 2022 (h/t to J.J. Cooper of Baseball America). According to the press release, the move is designed to “help Triple-A baseball better align with the Major League season” by delaying “the end date of the Minor League campaign to September 28.”

MiLB notes that the development puts into place the longest Triple-A season since at least 1964. In 2019, the most recent minor league season to begin on time, the Triple-A regular season schedule wrapped up by September 2. Ending the regular season within the first week of September was the typical process, leading to particular challenges for MLB teams that had injured players attempting to make late-season returns to the big leagues. Getting recovering players into minor league game action on rehab assignments during September became impossible unless one or more of the club’s farm teams had qualified for the postseason.

Last year’s Triple-A season carried into the first week of October, although that hadn’t been by design. Rather, the start of the season was delayed a month over COVID-19 concerns. This year, the Triple-A campaign is slated to begin on its more customary time, with first games scheduled for April 5. Expanding the docket a few games will allow it to more closely overlap with the MLB schedule, which is currently ticketed for March 31 through October 3.

The MLB schedule, of course, is contingent on the hammering out of a new collective bargaining agreement. Given the huge gaps still present in CBA talks, the possibility of a delayed start to the season (and possible compression of the schedule) looms larger day by day. The Triple-A schedule won’t be affected by the lockout, however.

Only players on an MLB 40-man roster are members of the MLB Players Association. That encompasses a handful of minor leaguers, mostly those added to the 40-man last November to keep them from selection in the Rule 5 draft. Yet the vast majority of minor league players are not on a 40-man roster. Those players can remain in contact with club personnel throughout the lockout and will report as scheduled for the start of the minor league campaign.

Atlantic League To Shelve Robot Umpires, Return Mound To Standard Distance

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The independent Atlantic League, one of four independent leagues designated as official MLB Partner Leagues following the 2020 reorganization of MiLB, will return to the traditional method of calling balls and strikes in 2022, reports J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. The league had adopted the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system — known colloquially as the ’robo-ump’ — ahead of the 2019 season, when it reached an agreement with Major League Baseball to test equipment and rules changes under consideration for use in affiliated ball. The league will also return the distance between the pitching rubber and home plate to the conventional 60 feet, 6 inches after a late-season trial of an extra foot was met with disfavor by players and coaches.

As Cooper points out, the strike-zone change is likely driven by the expectation of a more widespread implementation of ABS in the minors; there’s been no official announcement, but MLB posted job listings for an ABS tech to work with each team in Triple-A West (the successor to the Pacific Coast League) earlier in the offseason. The technology was also deployed in Low-A Southeast (the revamped Florida State League) in 2021 and in the 2019 Arizona Fall League.

Though just one of a number of rules changes mooted by the commissioner’s office during Rob Manfred’s tenure, the proposed automation (and thereby standardization) of the strike zone has proven to be among the most polarizing. Beyond more longstanding intra-fan disputes regarding the relative values of innovation and tradition, proponents of the idea have suggested that a strike zone standardized by precise technological measurement would substantially reduce the element of human error in umpiring decisions (and, perhaps, reverse the trend of declining contact rates), while those opposed argue that imprecision, ambiguity, and the idiosyncrasies of individual umpires — as well as the arguments that often ensue as a result of these — add intrigue and drama to the game.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the potential implementation of ABS at the big-league level, any longtime fan of the game will recognize a progressive change in the strike zone since the advent of pitch-tracking technology in the early 2000s, when MLB introduced QuesTec’s Umpire Information System in big-league ballparks to track umpire performance. This much less invasive system drew its fair share of criticism (Curt Schilling infamously took a bat to a QuesTec camera after a poor start in May 2002, and the umpires union filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board over its use before securing its removal in 2005 contract negotiations). Still, it’s long-term effects (as compiled in 2017 by Joe Lemire of Sports Business Journal) have rendered the effective strike zone closer to its rule-book definition, decreasing its width while increasing its height.

Despite scrapping the ABS, the Atlantic League will continue to test a number of potential tweaks to the game, including the use of 17-inch bases (2 inches larger than standard), anti-shifting rules (which require the four infielders to have two feet in the infield dirt before every pitch), and enhanced extra-inning ’zombie runner’ rules (which would place runners at first and second to start the 10th inning and load the bases in any innings thereafter). Further changes to Atlantic League play are expected to be announced later in the spring.

Minor League Notes: WooSox, Listach, Tigers

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While the first full week of 2022 remains light on the type of transactional news baseball fans are usually accustomed, there has been no shortage of big news on deals of a different kind. There’s potential for that trend to continue, as Michael Silverman of the Boston Globe reports the Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate, the Worcester Red Sox, is being eyed as an acquisition target by sports and entertainment company Endeavor. The Beverly Hills-based company is no stranger to minor league acquisitions, having scooped up ten minor league affiliates at the end of last year. Silverman notes that a $50MM bid by Endeavor for the Red Sox affiliate has seemingly already been rejected. That said, ownership groups are permitted to own up to 24 minor league teams at a time, meaning Endeavor has plenty of room to continue its pursuit of the Worcester outfit and add several other affiliates to its portfolio.

Some other minor league notes from around the league:

  • Per Jon Heyman of MLB Network, the Phillies have hired former big-league shortstop and 1992 AL Rookie of the Year Pat Listach as the bench coach for their High-A affiliate, the Jersey Shore BlueClaws. Listach played in parts of six seasons with the Brewers and Astros and has been a part of multiple major league coaching staffs, including with the Nationals, Cubs, and Astros, and has held minor league roles with the Cubs, Dodgers, and Mariners. Most recently, he served as the manager of the Mexican League’s Acereros de Monclova, whom he led to the playoffs in 2019 and 2021.
  • On Thursday, the Tigers unveiled their new-look set of minor league coaching staffs. Included among the new faces in Detroit’s ranks are 2016 World Series-winning coach Gary Jones, taking over as Triple-A manager, and former Tigers third baseman Gabe Alvarez, hired as the organization’s new Double-A manager. Chris McCosky of The Detroit News helpfully compiled the full list of Detroit’s development personnel changes here.

MLB To Experiment With Rule Changes In Minor Leagues

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The 2021 minor league season will see some new and altered rules at the various levels of playing, according to a statement from Major League Baseball.  “Consistent with the preferences of our fans, the rule changes being tested are designed to increase action on the basepaths, create more balls in play, improve the pace and length of games, and reduce player injuries,” the statement reads.

Many of these changes have long been discussed or even already used in other minor leagues — Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper notes that fans of the independent Atlantic League will recognize many of these rules adjustments.  It also isn’t necessarily the case that all of these new rules (whether in their current form or whatsoever) will ever appear at the MLB level, given the trial-and-error basis.

Triple-A baseball will see the size of the bases increased from 15 inches square to 18 inches square, a deceptively minor change that could end up having a notable impact on a game.  As the league’s statement reads, “the Competition Committee also expects the shorter distances between bases created by increased size to have a modest impact on the success rate of stolen base attempts and the frequency with which a batter-runner reaches base on groundballs and bunt attempts.”  In addition, larger bases will also reduce the chances of collisions on the basepaths.

Double-A baseball will experiment with a new rule that addresses defensive shifts, since going forward, “the defensive team must have a minimum of four players on the infield, each of whom must have both feet completely in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt.”  While shifting has been part of baseball for decades, teams have been using shifts more often and in a more elaborate fashion over the last few seasons, to the point that seeing a club deploy four or even five players in outfield for a particular batter isn’t out of the ordinary.

This initial rule will keep infielders within the infield, and the statement also hinted at further limitations to shifts in the second half of the Double-A season: “Depending on the preliminary results of this experimental rule change, MLB may require two infielders to be positioned entirely on each side of second base….These restrictions on defensive positioning are intended to increase the batting average on balls in play.”

Step-off and pickoff moves are the primary focus of the Single-A rules changes, as in High-A ball, “pitchers are required to disengage the rubber prior to throwing to any base, with the penalty of a balk in the event the pitcher fails to comply.”  This was one of the rules instituted in the Atlantic League in 2019, as noted in MLB’s statement, and the altered rule “resulted in a significant increase in stolen base attempts and an improved success rate.”

The step-off/pickoff rules will be even more significantly changed for all Low-A leagues.  If there is one or more runner on base, pitchers can only throw a maximum of two pickoffs or make two step-offs per plate appearance.  The pitcher can attempt a third pickoff or step-off but the play must result in the baserunner being retired.  If the runner gets back to his original base on this third pitcher try, the play is called a balk and the runner advances anyway.  MLB’s statement said that the limitation could be further lowered to just a single step-off or pickoff attempt per plate appearance, seeing how the initial rule plays out.

The Low-A West league will adopt on-field timers “to enforce time limits between delivery of pitches, inning breaks and pitching changes.”  An even more interesting electronic element will be part of the Low-A Southeast league, as the Automatic Ball-Strike System will be used “to assist home plate umpires with calling balls and strikes, ensure a consistent strike zone is called, and determine the optimal strike zone for the system.”

Start Of Triple-A Season Delayed

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It was reported back in January that the Single-A and Double-A seasons would not start on time. The same goes for the minors’ highest level, as the 2021 Triple-A campaign will be delayed “by at least a month,” Jeff Passan of ESPN.com writes. It had been scheduled to begin April 6.

There was no minors season in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, though the hope for this year is that they’ll be able to resume play sometime in May. As a result of the delay, alternate training sites will return this season and could last longer than expected, in part because of concerns over travel for minor leaguers, according to Passan. The alternate sites would feature about two dozen players, Passan adds.

Despite this setback, Passan writes that there’s hope the delay to the Triple-A slate will allow for the vaccination of players and a full season. The campaign will last into September if it opens in May.

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