Many people have chosen sides in the ongoing dispute between Major League Baseball's owners and players. I have not, because I don't know that there is a right side to it all.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, owners stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars and are looking for cost certainty in the form of payroll expenditures. The players are the talent and without them, there is no league. And they are never offered bonuses in seasons when revenues exceed expectations.
My senses are that both sides are being really short-sighted and ridiculous given all that is going on in the world. Now is not the time millionaires and billionaires should be arguing about how to divide hundreds of millions of dollars.
But there are some very clear situations I can point to that are wrong. Agent Scott Boras pulling the strings to try and get the richest players to reject pretty much anything that is sent their way from the owners is incredibly self-serving given that many of the top players are his clients. Blake Snell, Bryce Harper and the rest of the players who have been vocal about their displeasure with the idea that they must take a pay cut should probably just be quiet at this point. And the fact that the Oakland A's won't be paying their minor league players the $400 per week stipends starting next week is an embarrassment. The entire expense for the rest of the season would cost owner Jon Fisher, who is worth more than $2 billion, a grand total of about $1 million. That's absurd.
This week, we were also treated to a feel-good story that should sicken us. Dodgers pitcher David Price has reportedly pledged to pay $1,000 to every minor league player in the team's organization and is not on the 40-man roster for the month of June.
That is a tremendous job by Price and a stark contrast to some of his fellow players who are griping about taking a pay cut. Price is an athlete who is putting his money where his mouth is, and that is a refreshing change. Price has earned $184 million in his playing career and is due $48 million more over the next three seasons. He can afford the cost but so can a lot of others, including his bosses.
The Dodgers' owners should be embarrassed that one of their employees is stepping up and paying salaries. That is a joke for any pro sports organization, but the Dodgers are worth about $3.4 billion. The team has an obscene cable deal and a payroll of $222 million.
The Dodgers will pay their minor league players $400 a week at least through June, but why have the owners not already pledged to pay the stipend through the rest of the season? Again, as it has been established, the total price tag of that would be in the neighborhood of $1 million. The Dodgers will make that relatively little bit of money back without trying.
At the very least, the Dodgers should be willing to match the $1,000 per player for June that Price is offering, or better yet, tell him to keep his money and pay the money themselves.
This is the kind of thing that makes people get turned off to a sport. The Dodgers look incredibly cheap in this situation, and if the owners don't know that, they are incredibly dense. The owners who won't pay their minor league players through the end of the season should be embarrassed, but unfortunately they aren't, nor will they be.
