Sen. Bernie Sanders has sharply criticized a Major League Baseball proposal that could threaten the Vermont Lake Monsters’ future and called for higher wages for minor league players.
In a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred this week, Sanders said the plan would do “irreparable harm to the game’s relationship with millions of Americans.”
Major League Baseball has floated a proposal in negotiations with minor league baseball that would drop affiliation from 42 minor league teams, including the Lake Monsters. Local fans and politicians have also spoken out against the proposal, including Rep. Peter Welch.
“Shutting down 25 percent of minor league baseball teams, as you have proposed, would be an absolute disaster for baseball fans, workers and communities throughout the country,” Sanders wrote. “Not only would your extreme proposal destroy thousands of jobs and devastate local economies, it would be terrible for baseball.”
The Lake Monsters are an affiliate of the Oakland A’s and compete in the Class A New York-Penn League. They play their home games at the University of Vermont’s Centennial Field in Burlington.
MLB did not return a call to its media line requesting comment.
The league has argued that cutting the teams would improve working conditions and pay for players. MLB considered the proximity to the major league affiliate, the conditions of the facilities and other factors in determining which teams would lose affiliation.
The proposal would establish an independent “dream league” in some of the cities that are losing affiliation. But the costs of paying the players would fall to the teams instead of their major league affiliates, who currently foot the bill.
The dream league is not financially feasible, Jeff Lantz, senior director of communications for Minor League Baseball, said,
“Once you go to an independent league model, and the teams themselves have to start paying the salaries of the players, and the insurance, and the workers compensation on injuries, it just becomes, you know, an unsustainable model,” Lantz said.
Sanders criticized the league’s owners for the disparity between pay for minor leaguers and the profits the teams and their owners are making.
Minor league players make as little as $1,160 a month, which is less than the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage, Sanders wrote. The 20 wealthiest MLB owners have a combined net worth of more than $50 billion, he wrote.
“Instead of paying Minor League Baseball players a living wage, it appears that the multi-billionare owners of Major League Baseball would rather throw them out on the street no matter how many fans, communities and workers get hurt in the process,” Sanders wrote.
The average MLB team is worth $1.8 billion and made $40 million in profit last year, Sanders wrote.
Lantz said that Major League teams could afford to pay players more. This year, the Toronto Blue Jays raised pay for its minor league players by 50%.
“It kind of goes to show that the major league teams can pay players more if they want to,” Lantz said. “The Blue Jays wanted to, and they did it. So it can be done.”
The proposal to cut the teams is “drastic,” Lantz said.
“Nobody wants to see baseball leave any towns, whether it’s Burlington or Johnson City, Tennessee,” he said. “It’s part of the fabric of those communities and in a lot of cases, the summertime thing to do.”
But he cautioned that there was a long way to go in negotiations, and said he was hopeful the two sides could reach terms that work for both before the current agreement runs out after next season.
“I think it’s pretty early to be getting too worried, we have a long, long time left to negotiate,” he said.
If the Lake Monsters were cut, all of northern Vermont would be more than 50 miles from the closest minor league baseball team, according to an analysis by Fangraphs.
Sanders suggested the government reconsider the MLB’s antitrust exemption, a suggestion Welch also floated after news of the proposal broke.
In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that the business of baseball was recreation and was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act, giving the MLB a monopoly on the sport.
This exemption allows MLB to pay its minor league players below the minimum wage as they are not classified as full-time employees. While this exemption has been questioned over the years, it has withstood legal challenges.
