How MLB Should House Its Minor Leaguers
MLB says it will provide housing to minor league players, but it hasn't worked out the specifics. I asked minor leaguers what the specifics should be.
Jeff Passan’s report Sunday that MLB would begin housing its players starting in 2022 was light on specifics, probably because those specifics haven’t been decided yet. Among the things that Passan reports haven’t been decided is, basically, the entire plan: how the housing will actually be provided.
“Whether they will offer stipends that fully cover housing or provide the lodging itself has yet to be decided,” Passan reports.
So that’s the question: how will the program actually work? Just as important, how should it work? What’s the best way to provide housing for thousands of minor leaguers without negative side effects? I asked several minor leaguers how they’d prefer MLB to provide housing, and what they thought the effects of competing approaches might be.
Answers varied, but one theme stood out: MLB has to be flexible. Teams need to offer as many options as possible. On the surface, for instance, it might seem sensible for teams to simply rent as many rooms as there are players on each minor league roster, then hand out keys. But there are problems with that approach. All minor leaguers are different: some are just out of high school, but others are 36 years old with spouses and children.
So maybe it makes sense for teams to find a variety of different living arrangements, sticking the young players in studio apartments (or four to a four-bedroom, or something like that) but also making some more convenient, larger living arrangements available to players who need them. Except some players would rather find their own housing with their own roommates, or have living arrangements of their own, so team-provided housing would be wasted on them. These players, of course, would prefer a housing stipend, which would amount to a much-needed pay raise. There’s also the fact that a stipend would allow players to make housing arrangements that are a little more long-term. Team-provided housing, on the other hand, could end at a moment’s notice, and players wouldn’t have a housing stipend to fall back on while they made new housing arrangements.
“If a team just provides housing and a guy gets released, does he just become homeless?” one player said. “Providing housing but not paying above poverty wages is a new form of feudalism. Team-provided housing would be convenient, but I don’t believe it’s the best option.” That player’s solution: “stipend plus better wages.”
It’s an easy data point to reference, and it’s true: in the NBA’s G-League, the base salary is $35,000 plus housing. In MLB’s Minor Leagues, meanwhile, base pay is less than $15,000, and housing isn’t covered. So even if MLB starts fully covering player housing, they’ve still got some distance to traverse before they’ll be putting minor leaguers into a genuinely stable financial situation.
There are genuine arguments on both sides of the stipend/room argument, which is why flexibility is so important. On the one hand, if teams provide rooms, it makes things a lot easier for players who are reassigned or traded during the season. Rather than abruptly terminating one lease and quickly finding another one to start, they can simply move from one team-sponsored room to another. On the other hand, though, there are all the issues players mentioned. Some players don’t need team-provided housing, but would still love to earn the money teams have to house them. Some players just want to choose their own housing — their own location, their own roommates, etc. They don’t want to live in team housing and follow whatever rules the team may impose: no guests, no alcohol, no wives or children, etc.
“I honestly would rather a reasonable paycheck and no other gimmicks,” one player said. “Let people decide how they want to spend the money.”
He brought up a question. Some players have camper vans, or have friends or family in their team’s towns, so they don’t need team-provided housing. “So will they be reimbursed for not using the housing?” he asked. “Or will they just have to keep the room and keep the bad pay?”
Every minor leaguer’s situation is different — which is why MLB needs to implement the program as flexibly as possible. Stipends to players who want them; rent reimbursement, perhaps, to players who would prefer that for whatever reason. And team-provided rooms or apartments, meanwhile, for players — young, single, recently-traded, convenience-prioritizing — who would prefer not to have to hunt down a lease and lock into a full-season commitment.
The success or failure of MLB’s housing program will depend on whether MLB wants it to succeed. Implement it right, as flexibly and helpfully as possible, and it will be an enormous step forward for minor leaguers. Implement it thoughtlessly and simplistically, and it will fail. If MLB wants to house its minor leaguers, the first step should be providing the housing they actually need.