Two weeks after the richest owner in baseball came under fire for nickel-and-diming his minor league players, the Mets have slowly begun to improve conditions for some of them, the Daily News has learned.
Players in High-A Brooklyn will be reimbursed for the $10/night hotel costs they had paid the team this season. At Triple-A Syracuse, players will receive $300 a month as a housing stipend. And players at extended spring training in Florida will receive back pay for the months they trained for no pay, according to communications between the franchise and players.
The Mets would not comment on the changes. The franchise is still working through its minor league policy changes, according to a team source.
The changes come after a Daily News report about conditions in the Mets’ system.
“We are looking into this and will have a comprehensive response by late next week,” Mets owner Steve Cohen tweeted in response to the report on July 3, twenty days ago. “This was news to me and want to be thoughtful and not reactive in my actions.”
“We await the “comprehensive response” the Club promised to release last week and look forward to comparing that response to the changes suggested by Mets players,” the organization Advocates for Minor Leaguers wrote in a tweet Friday.
“The Mets are now the third team in the last month to make changes to their Minor League system in response to our advocacy,” Harry Marino, a former minor leaguer and the organization’s director, told the Daily News. (He’s referring to changes made by the Giants and Red Sox.) “This is proof that when Minor League players speak with a collective voice, they are heard,” Marino said. “While the Club did not meet its self-imposed deadline for providing a “comprehensive response” to our earlier tweets, we are hopeful they will make up for the delay by setting a new standard for the treatment of Minor Leaguers.”
The Mets join 12 other MLB teams in paying their extended spring players outside of the competitive season. Year-round pay for players is one of the modest demands from players in the Mets system released by Advocates for Minor Leaguers earlier this week. Minor league players largely earn less than $20,000 per year, with players getting paid baseball-wide minimums $700 per week in Triple-A, $600 per week in Double-A, and $500 per week in Single-A. (Mets players earn slightly more.) Much of those meager paychecks are eaten up by housing costs, a situation worsened by the pandemic. It was previously custom for minor league players to stay with host families.
