Mariners will pay minor leaguers through end of season, but face other reductions
With Major League Baseball’s agreement to compensate minor leaguers set to expire Sunday, the Seattle Mariners have offered players in their farm system more certainty — the organization will continue to pay them through the end of the season.
Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto sent a letter to Seattle’s minor league players Wednesday regarding the plan, a club source confirmed to The News Tribune late Wednesday night. The Seattle Times first reported the plan.
MLB has been paying minor league players not on 40-man rosters $400 per week during the COVID-19 shutdown, and the Mariners will continue that for players in their system beginning next week. Should the minor league season eventually begin, the players would resume their usual salaries.
Dipoto spoke about the importance of the decision to continue to pay the stipend Thursday morning on 710 ESPN Radio.
“We can’t abandon them in their hour of most need,” he said. “These are our most valuable assets — our young players who are coming through our sytem and project a greater future — and they are the most vulnerable right now, and we need to take care of them, and thankfully we work for an organization that feels the same way.”
Some minor leaguers have been informed of their release, the source confirmed. The Times reports more than 30 players were impacted.
The club’s decision to continue to compensate minor leaguers weekly through the end of the season comes not long after Tuesday’s report that Oakland would not pay its minor leaguers past the expiration of the MLB agreement on May 31.
Texas, another of the Mariners’ American League West rivals, will reportedly continue to pay its minor leaguers through June, and then evaluate again.
The Mariners have seven minor league affiliates, including Triple-A Tacoma, Double-A Arkansas, High-A Modesto, Low-A West Virginia, Short-A Everett, and rookie league affiliates the Peoria Mariners and Dominican Republic Mariners.
It seems more unlikely each day that any minor league teams will see the diamond this summer, as MLB and the MLB Players Association remain in turbulent negotiations about a possible return to play.
Though, Dipoto said during his radio show he remains hopeful there will be some form of a minor league season, and believes there will eventually be some resolution on the major league side.
“It’s a moving target, so it’s impossible for anybody to predict, but we’re all very optimistic that we are going to play baseball, and hopefully sooner than later,” he said.
The Mariners opened their spring training facility in Peoria, Ariz., which had been shut down since March, for voluntary workouts earlier this week, though a formal return for the club as a whole has not yet been planned.
Dipoto said once Arizona allowed baseball to resume, the Mariners saw no reason to hold back reopening the facility. He said he believes there is a group “north of 20 guys” currently using the facility, working out in smaller groups at different intervals with the strength and conditioning staff.
Dipoto assured there are many protocols in place to keep players safe and healthy while at the facility, and a series of checkpoints they have to complete each day before working out to continue to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile Park remains closed in Seattle under Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order.
With no official return date for baseball set, the Mariners, like other teams, have also had to make cuts on the baseball operations side, the source confirmed Wednesday night. Some employees making more than $60,000 per year will have salaries reduced between 10-25%, while others are being furloughed or laid off, the source confirmed.
The Mariners initially confirmed pay reductions of some staffers under Uniform Employee Contracts (UEC) last week in hopes to avoid the need for furloughs and layoffs.
Those will run through the end of the baseball year on Oct. 31 and include reductions of at least 20% for all UEC employees with salaries of $60,000 or higher.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 11:48 PM.
