Major League Baseball announced bare minimum changes to the way minor league players live and work on Sunday. Starting in 2022 MLB will require teams to provide housing for certain – not all – minor leaguers.

The vote on the mandate by all 30 team owners was unanimous. MLB has not announced its plan formally. Whether it’s through stipends that fully cover housing or provide lodging itself has yet to be decided.

With the richest owner in all of baseball, the Mets are one of the guiltiest parties. Minor league players are paid below the poverty line and deal with unfair and at times unsafe working conditions. It’s estimated that $50,000 would cover hotel fees for the organization, or what the Mets pay Bobby Bonilla every two weeks.

Criticism came toward the Mets in June when the Twitter account Advocates for Minor Leaguers showed the difference between how the Mets house players and the Phillies.

“The season is so unpredictable. We leave spring training and have just a couple days to find a short term lease in an unfamiliar city. We have no idea where we will be in a few months; we don’t even know for certain where we will be tomorrow night,” a player in the Mets’ organization told the Daily News in June. “We could get stuck paying rent at a place where we aren’t even living, if we get moved to a different team and our space doesn’t get filled by someone else. For guys who make as little as we do, that could mean an entire paycheck gone.”

The Mets charge players in Brooklyn $10 a day to stay in the team hotel, knowing they’re unable to afford typical housing in the area. Why charge them at all? To display a message that we control you.
Steve Cohen Tweeted in June “We are looking into this and will have a comprehensive response by late next week. This was news to me and want to be thoughtful and not reactive in my actions.”
He followed up by saying “Welcome to running new companies. It’s a treasure hunt.”
But it’s impossible for anyone who’s followed baseball for any amount of time to not know that minor league players are underpaid and deserve better treatment. Cohen wants to build a strong farm system but can’t use 0.00001% of his wealth to help.

“The Mets have the richest owner in all of baseball. … That they send players to the most expensive city in the country, pay them less than $10,000 a year after taxes, and then charge them a nominal fee to stay in the team hotel, is insulting. It doesn’t matter if this is how it’s always been done. New ownership promised better, and this is not better,” Harry Marino of Advocates for Minor Leaguers told the Daily News. “Mets fans and players deserve more.”

MLB is forcing teams to spend a penny. If Cohen wants to see real organizational change, it starts with him and shelling out a few more dollars to support his franchise.