Mets owner Steve Cohen has been cited in a suit by minor league baseball player against MLB for back pay.
Cohen – responding to Mets fans angst over not signing 10th overall pick Kumar Rocker – tweeted on Aug. 1, “Education time – Baseball draft picks are worth up to 5x their slot value to clubs. I never shy away from investments that can make me that type of return.”
Obviously, the tweet was widespread with Cohen boasting over 225,000 followers on the platform. It caught the eye of Dr. Erica Groshen, a senior economic advisor from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and former Commissioner of the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. Groshen was hired by players to write an expert report on why MLB has been allegedly paying sub-minimum wage salaries.
“One recent indication of the value of a minor league player comes from Steven Cohen, owner of the New York Mets. He asserts that baseball draft picks are worth up to five times their slot vale to Clubs,” Groshen wrote.
Two weeks ago MLB announced minimal changes to the way minor league players live on work which will require teams to provide housing for certain MiLB players.
Cohen had already been publicly criticized for the set up of the Mets minor league system which compared the folly of the Mets to the proper setup by the Phillies. Cohen stated he was unaware but an increasingly public way of dealing with news makes Cohen a target in dealings.
Cohen is not the reason why minor leaguers are suing MLB. The class-action lawsuit has been in place before Cohen bought the team in 2020. It’s that Cohen said the thing everyone in the industry knows but never said out loud and now his admittance will be used by minor leaguers as a way to seek fair compensation.
