Improving Leverage for Baseball Ops Employees
With news breaking this week that a settlement has been reached in the Senne lawsuit (still waiting on the details, which will be fascinating), I wanted to focus this post on the tough/strange road you have as a baseball ops employee.
There is a strange dynamic when you get hired in sports, especially in a coveted department like Baseball Operations. For most applicants looking to get into a baseball ops position (analytics, player development, scouting, administration...etc), landing a job is a dream come true that has been in the works for numerous years through internships, volunteering and networking. It is a life changing moment that quickly becomes a frustrating experience when you learn "how the game works."
What's the first frustrating experience you get when hired? Your salary offer. There is a mindset from organizations that they can offer the absolute minimum because "a thousand people want your job, you are lucky to have it." To me, that mindset is completely unacceptable. When you get hired, in theory, you just beat out those "thousand" of people. You are a coveted hire, your salary offer should reflect that dynamic. When I was first hired full time by the Giants in 2008, my salary was $41,000 (this was after earning $500 a month while I was an intern with the Giants in 2007 and $500 every three months while I was an intern with the A's in 2006). My salary steadily grew over the years, but when you start at such a low figure, the standard 3% - 3.5% raise doesn't go as far. The problem is, as an employee you have no leverage. Getting a full time offer in baseball ops is hard enough, if you try to negotiate a higher salary you run the risk of the organization turning you down and hiring somebody else. Is the risk of losing a lifelong dream worth it over an extra $5k - $10k in salary? For most people, that answer is no.
So now you have landed a dream job, with a low starting salary. What happens next? Not much, the organization has complete control over you. You want to send your resume around to other organizations to try to get a better job? You risk looking unloyal to your current org and getting fired (or in fancier terms, having your contract not renewed). Maybe you absolutely kill it at your position and get noticed by other organizations. In order for an outside team to hire you, they have to request permission from your current org to interview you. Most of the time your current org will say yes, but they do not have to grant permission. In fact, they could deny permission and never tell you about the request (this rarely happens, but it isn't impossible for this scenario to play out). They can also set limits. "You want to interview our ML Assistant hitting coach, that is fine. we will grant you permission. However, if you hire him you cannot select any of our players in the rule 5 draft and you cannot request permission to interview additional employees in our ORG for two years." How is that allowed? There are only 30 teams. Players in your organization just lost the chance to reach the ML as a rule 5 player for one team plus employees now have one less team that can pursue them.
What typically happens is an organization will only grant permission for an employee to interview if the job the outside team wants to hire you for is "seen as a promotion." But what exactly is a promotion? Sometimes it is obvious (Assistant GM is higher than any Director position. A Scouting Director/Farm Director position is higher than any entry level position, ie - coordinator, manager, associate...etc). What if the Pickles have a AA Pitching coach making $75,000 a year and the Tomato's want to hire that person as their Lo-A pitching coach, but pay them $85,000. Is that a promotion? It is a lower level, but the pay is $10K more. That's a promotion in my eyes. What if a AAA coach is located on the East Coach for the season but has two young kids back home in AZ where an outside organization wants to hire for the AZ rookie team 10 minutes from home where the opportunity to be home every night is a possibility. The pay is the same, shouldn't the coach have the chance to pursue that opportunity without being called unloyal?
The point is, calling something a promotion is very nuanced and employees deserve the opportunity to "shop" around and have a chance to gain some sort of leverage. For me, leverage is the most important aspect for employees to be treated fairly. On my last contract offer in 2021 I was offered a two year deal (2022 and 2023). My "raise" for 2022 was a 4% raise followed by a 0% raise for 2023. My options were; 1) accept the contract. 2) negotiate for a higher wage (maybe get a 6% or 7% raise) or 3) decline the contract and leave. I chose option 3 (to be fair, I left for many other reasons outside of the pay, but it was certainly one of the reasons). I had zero leverage to get a much bigger raise or promotion.
What is the solution? To me, it is a model similar to the college "transfer portal." Employees on expiring contracts (unfortunately if you have a multiple year deal, you are even more "tied" to your current org) should be able to put their name and resume into a MLB employee portal from October 15th to November 15th. Within that portal you can list your ideal location, salary, contract length...etc. Outside organizations can flag you as somebody they want to interview within that time period and offer you a position. If offered a position, an employee will actually have some leverage to negotiate with their current team. If the current team doesn't want to match an offer, the employee can feel secure they at least have another offer in hand and can move on to the new position. There can even be a limit on how many employees one organization can lose in one given off-season if teams are wary of losing too many employees. In the end, I believe a system like this would allow baseball ops employees a chance to gain leverage and possibly improve their quality of life.