Oakland Athletics Go from Small Market to Low Life
The Oakland Athletics are a prime example of how a small-market team can find success in a sport without a salary cap. Despite the fact they’re always near the bottom of the league in overall payroll, Oakland makes consistent playoff pushes. Over the last two seasons, they’ve won 97 games each. No playoff success has come since the turn of the millennium, but they are nonetheless a model small-market franchise. But now, they’ve taken frugality to an entirely new level. And there’s nothing about this level of frugality after which other franchises should be modeling themselves.
Not only will the franchise furlough their scouts through October after the Draft, they will not be paying their minor leaguers $400-a-week paychecks for the remainder of the season. It’s truly astonishing how penny pinching the move to not pay minor leaguers is. Just think about the math. As Jeff Passan pointed out on Twitter, it would cost roughly $1 million to pay all their $400-a-week minor leaguers for the entire season. Owner John Fisher is worth $2.1 billion. He could, without earning another penny for the rest of his life, pay his minor leaguers every year until 4020 without running out of money. There are plenty of ways for him to cut costs. Turning his back on the future of the franchise is an interesting and asinine choice. Legally, who’s to say the Athletics’ minor leaguers can’t declare themselves free agents after their franchise failed to hold up their end of the bargain? There are some very sticky legal questions that could arise in the coming months.
What’s most concerning is that the A’s are the first team to take such a drastic step, but they’re unlikely to be the only team. Other owners may feel emboldened to pull the trigger on a similar move now. Should too many teams decide to do that, we could be facing a really serious labor problem in baseball. And all of this is before we even mention the labor dispute going on between the owners and players association (who does not represent minor leaguers).
For the professional players in the A’s organization who aren’t clear-cut future stars, this move could very well disenchant them from the idea of playing baseball going forward. Is it hyperbolic to suggest Oakland may have trouble fielding competitive teams in their lower-level minor league teams in the near future? It’s too early to tell, but it’s not unreasonable to believe there might be a handful of players who walk away from the game as a result of this questionable decision. These players are already earning below minimum wage and now they won’t earn a paycheck because of circumstances outside of their control?
Minor-league players have no leverage since they aren’t represented by a union, so the owners can do with them what they please. And in all of this, that tells us all we need to know. You learn a lot about a person in a situation where they have all the leverage. The fact the A’s took this opportunity to deny their lowest-earning employees a paycheck for the rest of the year tells us what we need to know about their ownership. With commissioner Rob Manfred putting 40 MiLB teams on the chopping block, the minor-league system of baseball is very much in danger. Should many teams follow the Athletics’ lead, the minor leagues as we have known them, may never be the same.