Oakland A’s minor league meals embarrassing

The life of a minor leaguer is hardly glamorous. The long bus rides, relatively cheap hotels, lack of amenities, and meager pay are all well known. Those players who stick out those years in the minors and find their way to the major leagues are desperate to never return to that type of life, no matter which franchise they play for.

The Oakland A’s showed why that would be the case. Several of their minor leaguers shared photos of their recent postgame meals, and suffice to say, these are completely lacking.

Oakland A’s postgame meals for minor leaguers a disgrace

Quite simply, these ‘meals’ are a disgrace. Teams such as the A’s put a great deal of faith in their ability to develop players through the minor league system, making those prospects all the more important. As such, one would think that providing nutritious meals would be of the utmost importance.

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For their part, the A’s have acted upon these issues. Team president Dave Kaval sent a tweet announcing that they had fired their third party vendor, calling these ‘meals’ unacceptable. Kaval also stated the team’s intention to redouble their efforts to provide the best options at every level of the minors.

But this does nothing to change the perception of the A’s to the baseball universe. The team has a reputation of being cheap, of refusing to pay their players anything close to what they are worth despite owner John Fisher being worth $3.4 billion. After all, the A’s were planning to stop paying their minor leaguers until they were essentially guilted into changing their minds.

The minor leagues are an area where teams can look to save some money. That was a part of why Major League Baseball slashed 40 minor league teams this past offseason, regardless of the stated reasoning. And, unlike major leaguers, minor league players do not have a union where they can fight for better from these teams.

Nonetheless, things like this are remembered. Players that may be weighing various minor league offers will remember seeing what the A’s had been feeding their players. If everything else is equal, that could be enough to get those players to go elsewhere.

The Oakland A’s ask a lot of their farm system in terms of being able to contend at the major league level. It is time they are treated as an asset.