Big league vets with minor league deals get up to $50K
Federal judge tosses fan lawsuit vs MLB, Astros and Red Sox
NEW YORK, April 4, (AP): About 370 players who were at big league spring training with minor league contracts will get advance payments of up to $50,000 each from the Major League Baseball Players Association.
The money approved Friday by the union’s executive board will be in addition to $400 weekly allowances being paid to all minor leaguers through May 31 by the Major League Baseball.
Among the players eligible for payments from Friday’s allocation are Félix Hernández, Matt Kemp, Pablo Sandoval, Neil Walker, Derek Holland, Jerry Blevins, Edwin Jackson, Chris Iannetta, Brandon Morrow, Jonathan Lucroy and Trevor Cahill.
Players can receive $5,000 if they have at least one day or major league service.
The amount increases to $7,500 for one year of service, $15,000 for two, $25,000 for three and $50,000 for six.
Any player may opt out of the money, which is being advanced against salaries. Players are eligible if they were at spring training on March 13, the day after play stopped.
Veteran big leaguers who go to spring training with minor league deals usually are trying to earn big league roster spots, agreements that leave teams with little financial exposure. Most players find out during the final week of spring training whether they will be added to a 40-man roster.
Players on 40-man rosters, 60-man injured lists and on outright assignments to the minor leagues with big league deals are covered by the March 26 agreement between MLB and the union.
They each will receive $286,500, $60,000, $30,000 or $15,000, depending on their contract. That money comes from a $170 million advance fund paid by MLB over what was to have been the season’s first 60 days.
If games are played this year, that money would be offset against salaries. If the season is scrapped, players would keep the advances.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by fantasy sports contestants who claimed they were damaged by sign stealing in Major League Baseball.
Five men had sued MLB, MLB Advanced Media, the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox in federal court in Manhattan, claiming fraud, violation of consumer-protection laws, negligence, unjust enrichment and deceptive trade practices by teams that violated MLB’s rules against the use of electronics to steal catchers’ signs.
“A sport that celebrates ‘stealing,’ even if only of a base, may not provide the perfect encouragement to scrupulous play,” US District Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote Friday in a 32-page opinion. “Nor can it be denied that an overweening desire to win may sometimes lead our heroes to employ forbidden substances on their (spit) balls, their (corked) bats, or even their (steroid-consuming) selves. But as Frank Sinatra famously said to Grace Kelly (in the 1956 movie musical High Society), “there are rules about such things.”
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred ruled in January the Astros violated rules against electronic sign-stealing during home games en route to their World Series title in 2017 and again in 2018.
He suspended manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow for one season each, and both were fired by the team.
Manfred fined the Astros $5 million, the maximum under MLB rules and stripped the team of its next two firstand second-round draft picks.
Manfred fined the Red Sox in 2017 for using Apple Watches to pass along signals. Boston is being investigated for possible violations of electronic signstealing rules in 2018, when it won the
World Series.
“In 2017 and thereafter, the Houston Astros, and somewhat less blatantly the Boston Red Sox, shamelessly broke that rule, and thereby broke the hearts of all true baseball fans,” Rakoff wrote. “But did the initial efforts of those teams, and supposedly of Major League Baseball itself, to conceal these foul deeds from the simple sports bettors who wagered on fantasy baseball create cognizable legal claim? On the allegations here made, the answer is no.”
The five men who sued participated in fantasy contests hosted by DraftKings from 2017-19.
“The connection between the alleged harm plaintiffs suffered and defendants’ conduct is simply too attenuated to support any of plaintiffs’ claims for relief,” Rakoff said.