Major League Baseball wants Ron DeSantis and the Legislature to carve minor league players out of Florida’s minimum wage

Major League Baseball wants Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature to let team owners pay their minor league players less than minimum wage.

The professional baseball league is lobbying Florida’s elected leaders for legislation that would cut baseball players out of the state’s minimum-wage law. That would allow MLB teams — all of which are owned by billionaires or near-billionaires — to get away with making minor leaguers work without salaries during key periods like spring training and fall instructional leagues.

MLB teams have historically refused to pay players outside the league’s roughly six-month regular season. That forces many minor leaguers — all of whom must practice and train year-round and most of whom will never actually make it to the big leagues — to survive on sub-poverty salaries that sometimes work out to less than $5,000 a year.

But last year, the league and its owners agreed to pay $185 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by minor leaguers who said MLB’s pay practices violated wage and hour laws around the country — including in Florida.