Adam Jones asks union and owners to help MiLB

Player Adam Jones had a great career in MLB before leaving to seek new horizons in Japan with the Buffalos de Orix of the NPB. In 14 years in the majors he was Silver Bat, four times Gold Glove and 5 times All-Star as a gardener, where he is most recognized for his time playing for the Baltimore Orioles. Now from a distance, Jones sees the labor conflict between owners and players where there are no proposals for the main problem of the sport: The minor league players.

In an interview for Ben Verlander’s “Flippin ‘Bats” podcast, Adam Jones mentioned that if you talk about money, where you have to start the discussion is in the minor leagues, where everyone has passed and Jones knows the hardships that are lived in the lower divisions of Major League Baseball.

When it comes to money, look at the minor leagues first. That’s where I would start because most of the kids there earn peanuts. Look at the numbers for how many players stay in the majors and win the minimum. The owners take you up and down and they know how to manipulate your service time so that in the end they pay you 75% of the MLB minimum. Stop looking at the guys in Louis Vuitton, because I know several 4- or 5-year-olds in MLB and they don’t have a single dollar to their name because of their minor league debts. The players there are always one pitch, one turn from being finished.

Thanks to the exception of the antitrust law that the United States government has on MLB, the owners are allowed to pay minor league players amounts less than the federal minimum wage and classify them as temporary employees or trainees, with some levels earning less than 20 thousand dollars per year for playing in Class A or Double A.

Gabriel Delgado

I started as a rookie on Al Bat in early 2018 and I’m going into my third season covering Major League Baseball as a web reporter. I am a fan of the San Francisco Giants, a number one defender of Barry Bonds and a critic of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto and Ronald Acuña are the future of baseball, Mike Trout is overrated, and the Astros deserved to be taken away from the World Series for cheating. Besides baseball, I also enjoy soccer, football, basketball, and just about any other game that includes a ball or a ball. I am also an amateur musician, penniless gamer and very nerdy. Graduated in journalism from the University of Guadalajara, I graduated in 2017. Born in the shrimp capital of the world, Escuinapa, Sinaloa. I lived in Australia for a while; i survived giant spiders, tasmanian devils and fought a kangaroo and didn’t die trying.

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