The Oakland Athletics will be the latest MLB team to furlough employees and cut salaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ESPN's Jeff Passan and Alden Gonzalez, the A's will furlough much of their baseball operations department and those that remain are facing pay cuts. Also, the club will stop playing minor leaguers their $400 weekly stipend after May 31.
"Unfortunately, considering all of the circumstances affecting the organization at this time, we have decided not continue your $400 weekly stipend beyond May 31," A's GM David Forst wrote to the team's minor league players in an email obtained by The Score's Robert Murray. "This was a difficult decision and it's one that comes at a time when a number of our full-time employees are also finding themselves either furloughed or facing a reduction in salary for the remainder of the season. For this, I am sorry."
Minor league players are not paid during spring training -- the $400 weekly stipend is equivalent to their spring training per diem -- so many have not received a paycheck since last season. And because they are still bound by their Uniform Player Contract, they are not able to collect unemployment benefits while baseball is on hiatus. They'll have to find jobs in a brutal job market.
The typical major league organization club has 200-250 non-40-man roster minor leaguers under contract. Two-hundred-and-fifty players at $400 a week is $100,000 total per week, or less than $1 million to continue paying everyone through the end of July. Forbes estimates the A's took in $225 million in revenue last year with a $96 million major league payroll.
Passan and Gonzalez report the A's will furlough their professional scouts next week and their amateur scouts shortly after the June 10-11 amateur draft. The Los Angeles Angels, a club with far greater resources than the A's, will have widespread furloughs as well. Commissioner Rob Manfred gave teams the latitude to furlough employees a few weeks ago.
The Athletics missed a $1.2 million rent payment on RingCentral Coliseum that was due April 1. The club claimed they "were not able to generate revenue and they have no ability to pay." As a result, the A's may not be able to use their home ballpark should the MLB season begin at some point.
MLB announced in March that minor leaguers will continue receiving the $400 weekly stipend through May 31. Several teams, including the White Sox, have announced they will continue paying players beyond that date.
MLB and the MLBPA are currently negotiating the start of the 2020 season. The league proposed a sliding salary scale that would see some players take a pay cut north of 77 percent.
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Athletics to stop paying minor leaguers after May 31, report says - CBS Sports
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