by Bill Moriarity / A’s Farm Editor
Lost in yesterday’s news about the A’s ending payments to their minor league players this season was the fact that the A’s have also decided to furlough the majority of their scouts and player development staff.
The organization is furloughing almost all of its amateur and pro scouts. Its pro scouts will be furloughed after the end of this month, while amateur scouts will be furloughed beginning on June 16, the week after the amateur draft.
One of the A’s furloughed scouts summed up the news to A’s Farm by saying that it is, “tough times for a lot of us I am afraid.”
Most of the organization’s player development staff, including virtually all of the system’s minor league managers and coaches, are being furloughed as well. And many of the A’s remaining baseball operations staff will be taking pay cuts.
The furloughs are currently set to last through October 31, when most baseball operations personnel contracts with the organization are set to expire. At that point, it will be up to the organization to decide which individuals it would like to offer future employment. Until then, the team will continue to provide health insurance, life insurance, pension and 401K payments for all furloughed employees.
While no official announcement has yet been made about the cancellation of the minor league season, the A’s move to furlough most of their player development staff for the next five months makes it pretty clear that no one expects there to be a minor league season this year, regardless of what happens at the major league level.
Among the scores of baseball personnel being furloughed are the A’s top minor league manager, Fran Riordan, who led the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators to a division championship last year, long-time minor league manager Rick Magnante, who recently turned 72 and was set to skipper the Vermont Lake Monsters this season, and top scout Neil Avent, who’s scouted and signed such players as Chad Pinder, Sean Doolittle and recent 1st-round draft picks Austin Beck and Logan Davidson. Susan Slusser of The Chronicle recently reported that long-time minor league manager Webster Garrison, who has been hospitalized for the past two months while battling the COVID-19 virus, is one of the few exceptions from the furloughs.
With the amateur draft set to last just five rounds this year, the dismissal of almost all of the A’s scouting staff within days of the amateur draft in June could seriously hinder the A’s ability to sign the multitude of undrafted amateur players who will be available to sign with any club as free agents. Organizations are technically forbidden from talking with undrafted amateurs until June 14, and the A’s area scouts are set to be furloughed after June 15.
These area scouts are typically the individuals who’ve built relationships with amateur players around the country and who would be counted on to try to sign them after the draft. So, with the decision to furlough most of these scouts just days after the draft, along with the A’s other recent cost-cutting measures, one can’t help but get the impression that the A’s may not be prepared to be terribly aggressive when it comes to pursuing and signing undrafted amateur players after this year’s five-round draft, even for the low maximum-allowable cost of $20,000.
As for the amateur players the A’s draft next month, they’ll each receive a maximum of just $100,000 of their signing bonus this year, with the remainder deferred and paid out over the following two years. But with no minor league game action expected this season, once they sign, there may be nowhere for them to go. So, this year’s draftees likely won’t get the chance to make their pro debuts in actual minor league games until the spring of 2021.
There’s also the question of how many of the A’s furloughed scouts and minor league staff will return in 2021, whether they’re asked to return or whether they choose to return. There’s a lot of uncertainty in all corners of the baseball world right now, perhaps even more at the minor league level than at the major league level, and perhaps even more in the A’s organization than in others after this wave of furloughs.
The 72-year-old Magnante, who has spent 13 seasons managing in the A’s minor league system and served as a scout for the organization as well, was looking forward to spending this season skippering the Vermont Lake Monsters in the New York-Penn League, one of the team’s that may be contracted in the minor league reorganization plan proposed by MLB. He told A’s Farm that, despite the likely cancellation of the 2020 minor league season, “I would love to continue to manage.” But he added that, depending on how everything plays out, “I realize that this lost season could be my last season.”
And given recent developments, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising if many others in the A’s organization have had that same thought cross their minds lately.
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