MLB should open the Home Run Derby and its $1 million prize to minor leaguers

Many minor league players earn less than minimum wage. Let them jack dingers for exposure and prizes.

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If MLB’s annual Home Run Derby felt like it had a little extra juice on Monday night, it might have been the baseballs, or it might have been the players, or it might have been that I was adequately caffeinated at home this year instead of searching Marlins Park for an appropriately sized coffee.

But maybe, just maybe, MLB successfully invigorated the Home Run Derby in 2019 by adding the $1 million prize that Mets rookie masher-man Pete Alonso took home for outlasting Vlad Guerrero Jr. and winning the event. Pro athletes are universally competitive and there’s no doubt past Derby competitors were trying their best. But it couldn’t have hurt that the stakes were raised, especially when that bonus essentially means tripling the annual salary of a young player like Alonso, who is making the league minimum. A cool million dollars is inevitably going to add an intensity that even a pregame Pitbull concert can’t match.

I still maintain that the day before the All-Star Game would be better for the addition of challenges that test baseball skills beyond sheer home-run power. And the derby in general has gotten way, way more entertaining since the league moved from the old 10-swings format to clocked rounds. But it’d be further improved, I think, with an idea I half-jokingly suggested a year ago: Letting minor-league sluggers in on the action.

If you’re not familiar with the plight of minor league baseball players, you haven’t been reading my stuff long enough. In short: Many minor leaguers earn less than half as much money as fast-food workers, well below the federal minimum wage. Where Major League salaries average over $4 million, a minor league veteran in his rookie contract might be expected to survive on $12,000 a year. Major League Baseball absolutely needs these guys to make the sport as good as it is, yet the league has lobbed Congress to ensure they remain exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Even commissioner Rob Manfred finally seems to be recognizing that it’s a problem, and — to be clear — I am absolutely not suggesting that giving a handful of minor-league mashers a slim shot at a seven-figure prize is nearly the type of reform necessary to properly compensate all the wildly underpaid players toiling in the service of a $10 billion industry.

I’m just saying, if you want the Home Run Derby to have even higher stakes, add some minor leaguers to the mix to see how they slug against the big boys. And I’m not talking about just the promising young prospects already on hand for the Futures Game, either. Bring on some dudes with little to no shot at meaningful Major League tenures: The position-less slugger not quite patient enough to catch on as a Major League DH; the big-swinging A-ball outfielder known for shattering car windows and strikeout records; the guy who’ll never quite figure out big-league caliber breaking balls but makes a career of keeping Triple-A pitchers honest by crushing their fastballs.

Most of those guys, presumably, could really use a million dollars, probably more than Pete Alonso or Vlad Guerrero Jr. could, on account of Alonso and Guerrero are very likely to make millions playing baseball. And, again, minor leaguers deserve fair pay for their work, they’re not currently getting it, and a Running Man scenario is obviously not the appropriate solution.

Part of me thinks it should be done as a whole big thing like The Basketball Tournament, letting anyone in the world who is not a Major League Baseball player enter and holding single-elimination qualifying tournaments in various regions all offseason long to determine which guys will get to compete against the big-leaguers on Derby day. But since that seems logistically difficult to pull off, MLB could far more easily just have all its full-season minor league levels hold their All-Star games a week before the Major League version, then welcome the winners of the various levels’ home-run derbies to take their shot for the million.

I’d watch that. Who wouldn’t watch that?

Monday’s big winner: Tiger Woods, I guess

Woods is preparing for the Open Championship in Northern Ireland by waking up at 1 a.m. ET to prepare his body for the time change. That seems pretty smart, but it also seems like a good way to drop out of society altogether. A while back, I had a job where my shifts often ran from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., and I really liked that lifestyle — I’d get to bed around 4:30 a.m., wake up by noon, and have six hours to put around my neighborhood before getting myself to the workplace.

But if there’s one schedule I’m not sure I’d ever adjust to, it’d probably be waking up at 1 a.m. on the regular. It seems so inconvenient! Now I’m awake but I need to wait five hours until the bagel shop even opens and nine hours before I can do any retail shopping. Presumably Tiger Woods has people to prep him food at any time and a home full of cool stuff to entertain him, but it has got to feel weird the first time you put your phone on do-not-disturb mode at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Also, I guess the video in the post above originally came from Nike’s social-media channels, but it’s funny and strange to me that Woods addresses it to “Nike” like it’s his diary or something. It feels like he’s checking in out of obligation on a space mission that has long since lost contact with Earth. A noble mission to spread brand awareness.

Quick hits: Juiced balls, USWNT, Trout

– After Justin Verlander called MLB’s obviously juiced baseballs “a joke,” our Andy Nesbitt argued in favor of the increase in homers. I stand by my utterly unspicy take of a couple weeks ago. I love home runs, but they’re not as cool when balls that don’t even appear well-struck fly over the wall.

– Members of the USWNT will get about $250,000 each in bonus money for winning the World Cup. If the U.S. men’s team had done it — and they wouldn’t have — they’d have gotten $1 million apiece. Hemal Jhaveri examined the soccer stars’ fight for equal pay.

– For Mike Trout Monday, I made the case against the All-Star Game and for the One-Star Game.