So why aren’t more teams investing in uncovering hidden assets?...
“That’s way above my pay grade,” said a player development person for an NL club. “The simple answer is, owners don’t have to. And teams don’t care as much because the guys who are in the dire situations were typically not investments in the first place. If they work, they work, but they are viewed as fodder for the guys we paid money to get better.”
Even those offseason camps are often a stark contrast between the top few rounds and everyone else. They are technically optional to attend, though if you’re invited the joke around minor-league players is they’re optionally mandatory.
“If you don’t go,” said one player juggling multiple jobs, “it’s a big F-U to the organization.”
If you do, guys give up those precious week(s) of making offseason money. One player, who has a family, had to turn his invite down. “Free housing doesn’t pay for diapers,” he said. He wonders if his stock in the organization will plummet.
Another pointed out that guys who did go to one team’s camp, which ended in late January, now had a few weeks to sit around and wait for spring training. It’s nearly impossible to find work for that short of a span, so many guys are just taking the financial hit, waiting until their first paycheck comes in three long months.
