Kansas City Royals: GM Dayton Moore took pay cut for minor leaguers

It’s pretty easy for MLB front office executives to receive a lot of criticism. After all, these executives are paid hefty salaries to run the business side of baseball from their comfortable stadium suites. If your team is underperforming by its own expectations and standards, fans often jump on the front office as causes for these problems.

In fact, your team may make it all the way to the World Series and the front office will still be criticized. Here’s a story that may change the tune because Kansas City Royals General Manager Dayton Moore is owed some serious praise.

Kansas City Royals GM Dayton Moore took pay cut for minor leaguers

During the Royals’ Spring Training contest with the Seattle Mariners Tuesday, the Fox Sports broadcast team caught a nugget of feel-good news. This news came via an in-game interview with Mike Sweeney, the Special Assistant to Baseball Operations for Kansas City.

The clip, uploaded to Twitter by Shaun Newkirk of RoyalsReview.com, featured Sweeney explaining that Moore personally took a pay cut to help pay the Royals minor league players.

From a financial standpoint, the entire MLB took on devastating losses as a result of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. A recent article from Mike Ozanian at Forbes reported that the MLB and its teams lost nearly $1 billion last year, which included base wages for 40-man rosters falling by $2.5 billion.

Minor league players, who already have it pretty tough in terms of financial success, were hit even harder after the 2020 minor league season was canceled altogether. Instead of receiving their base salary pay, teams offered their minor leaguers a partial weekly stipend for at least part of, and in some cases the majority, of the previously scheduled minor league season.

During his in-game interview, Sweeney joked that this information was supposed to remain private. He even “hoped not to be fired over saying this.”

The MLB did recently reveal a pay bump for all minor leaguers beginning in 2021, but it’s still a struggle financially. According to calculations with the pay bump, a minor leaguer won’t make more than $15,000 for five months of baseball service. When you add in the general cost of living, helping provide for family members, other general expenses, and paying for year-long training, it seems almost impossible to live on those wages.

The story of Moore taking a pay cut to help alleviate some of these financial struggles is a feel-good one. It could easily be overlooked, but that’s the type of team leadership that any fan, player, or general bystander could rally around.