Xavier Moreno

Great news for baseball fans and those striving to become part of the professional league was announced Oct 17 2021 that the MLB teams will now provide housing for Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players.

For those who don’t know, the MiLB is a hierarchy for professional baseball teams that are each affiliated to one of the Major League teams. They are ranked into four different categories. AAA is the highest ranked, then it goes to AA, High A and finally Low A. 

You may think that this is for players who just aren’t cut out for the Major Leagues but that is not the case. Nearly every player in the MLB started out in the MiLb and worked their way up. Since the MLB draft was created in 1965 only 23 players have ever skipped the Minors, with the latest being Garrett Crochet, who was selected by the White Sox from the University of Tennessee, in 2020, the first time in 11 years. But most players will start in one of the lower ranks and work their way up over varying lengths of time. Some players will get through relatively fast in just a couple years yet there might be some who have been there for ten or more.

Players in the MiLB receive a very small wage, AAA players make an average of $15,000 a year while A players make around $6,000 a year. Most players in the MiLB hoping to go to the Major League are resigned to live with host families and live off of their parents.

Sometime in Mid-September, owners from the MLB teams met up and agreed unanimously to a plan that would set up housing for the Minor League players. The plan has yet to be more than just a rough outline and they still have to figure out whether this plan will involve giving players a stipend to pay for housing or if they will provide the lodging itself. 

However it ends up working out, this is still a great step forward for the League. The players in the MiLB live bumpy lives when it comes to personal finances and this plan will make it easier for them to grow as athletes and give them better chances to get into the MLB.