Ever since it became public knowledge that the Houston Astros players had been going outside the acceptable boundaries to steal opposing team’s signs during games a few years back, the organization has had a black eye — along with some welts from getting hit by numerous wayward pitches.
The Astros were branded cheaters, with the Manager and General Manager losing their jobs. Most felt the punishments were far too lenient.
While some of the anger died down over the course of the last year or so (and the pandemic really did them a favor in that regard) the stigma has remained.
You never know what’s going on inside the heads of baseball executives. Maybe the Astros brass remains sensitive to the impact of the sign stealing scandal, or maybe they’ve moved on. But for whatever reason, they’ve just recently done a really good thing for their players who have not yet reached the big leagues. The Astros have implemented a plan to “provide furnished apartments to minor league players across all levels” this season. They’re the first big league organization to do so.
This is a bigger deal than it might seem to the average baseball fan. Minor league players don’t live the good life. They don’t travel first class – or charter – they don’t get $100/day in meal money or stay in five star hotels. They ride rickety buses for hours at a time, stay in modest motels and scarf down fast food while they try to develop into big leaguers. Their paychecks are typically below minimum wage pay scale. A study that came out in 2018 noted that the average Triple A player – who is one step away from the big leagues – earned about $15,000 a year. It’s less in Double and Single A. The federal poverty line for individuals is $12,880. Minor league players – the lifeblood and he future of every big league organization – have historically been treated like crap.
Think of it this way: It’d be like if a farmer hired farm hands to take care of his crops – which are the life blood of his business – but decided he wouldn’t pay them enough to live AND eat on. He needs those farmhands in tip top condition so they can work hard and help the crops he grows into a marketable product, something better than his competitors can provide. So why wouldn’t he do everything he could do for them?
That’s been the mystery for years: Why minor league players have been treated like they don’t really matter.
MLB would sometimes try to make their lives easier (but still not pay them much.) For instance, in previous years, a lot of MLB teams had employed the use of “host families” in smaller towns to house players at no cost to the players. The players got a comfortable place to live while they played home games, and it didn’t cost the organization anything more than some free tickets. That made the meager paychecks go a little further.
But the pandemic made the host family plan obsolete for the present, and the plan was scrapped for this season. So that meant that even after MLB trimmed back the number of affiliates each organization fielded (and had to support financially) and even after they gave minor leagues a measly across the board pay raise effective this year, it wasn’t going to matter if the players had to find and pay for their own living spaces.
Then, this week, out of the blue, came the news about the Astros plan to provide decent housing for all their minor leaguers.
It’s a first class move by an organization that’s still trying to rebuild its reputation.
This should go a LONG ways to help.
Even if this doesn’t wash away the sign stealing stigma with fans and the media, it will have a dramatic impact on how players view the Astros organization moving forward. Houston just picked up a ton of goodwill among players. Hopefully, what they’re doing will force other organizations to follow suit.
No organization wants to be the one that treats it’s farmhands like…farmhands.
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