I’m sure many a ball player has talked about their transition to the majors. Is it still a big step up in the level of play or is it a natural move and you just have to get in the groove with your new teammates?
There’s a huge step up in difficulty going by the numbers. Here is a MLB article about that. The gap between AAA and the majors is significant.
As for what it’s like to go through this process, I found this interesting web site that is basically a primer for what a player needs to do to make it between the different levels and finally to get to the majors.
As that page attests to, making it there is tough.
The hurdle of promotion is a reality that every Minor League player must face. The competition is fierce, and the margin for error is slim. Players must not only excel on the field but also navigate the complex and sometimes unpredictable nature of the promotion process. The journey through the MiLB is a testament to the dedication, perseverance, and talent required to reach the pinnacle of professional baseball.
The odds of making it to the MLB are daunting. According to MLB.com, only about 10% of players drafted or signed make it to the Major Leagues. This statistic underscores the fierce competition and the immense talent required to reach the pinnacle of professional baseball.
There is a chart on that page that shows the odds of making it to the majors and how that closely correlates to where you were drafted, which is just basic common sense. Players in the first round have a very high likelihood of getting drafted, but anyone from the 2nd round on has it tough. Just going from the first to second round drops the odds goes from 77% to 30%.
| Draft Round | Players Drafted | MLB Players | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 30 | 23 | 76.7% |
| 2nd-5th | 120 | 36 | 30.0% |
| 6th-10th | 150 | 24 | 16.0% |
| 11th-20th | 300 | 24 | 8.0% |
| 21st+ | 1170 | 48 | 4.1% |
It’s kind of weird in baseball. It’s not like graduating from college and getting into the NFL. In MLB, the minors are always there. You might join a team with one or more people you played with in the minors. You might make just a couple of appearances briefly in the majors and then go back down to the minors. You might go into the majors until you struggle, then go back to the minors to work on some issue or another to come back. You might have a long career in the majors but go back to the minors to help you get past a slump now and then. It’s all one big system, and every minor league baseball player is signed to a major league team, whether or not they actually make appearances in the majors at any point (and as shown before, only 10% on average will play in the majors). So I’m sure it will be different for every player and their particular circumstances.
The biggest difference though is money. In the minors, your annual salary is between $20,430 a year to $36,590. (These are current salaries this year.) If that is your only income, at the bottom end you are barely over the poverty level.
The average salary for someone playing in MLB, not high end, but average, is over $5 million.
Nitpick: The $36K figure is the minimum for a AAA (the highest level) player. A player at that level will typically make $50K - 100K, which is a reasonable living, but a whole lot less than the majors.
I’ve always wondered about Major League players who get sent down to the minors as part of an injury rehab: What do they make while in the minors? Are they getting their contracted Major League pay? Or does the fine print in their contracts typically spell out rehab assignment pay rates?
From my limitted understanding, a player with a major league contract is paid a major league salary even if sent back to AAA, either for rehab or performance issues. Which means that a AAA team quite often has a few multimillionaires playing alongside the aspiring major leaguers.
Thanks for the correction. 
It depends on the contract.
If you have a contract with the majors, you get all the money you’re owed. If you have a contract with the minors, you may get a bump in pay just for your major league appearances.
A player on a split or Minor League contract will earn the prorated portion of his Major League salary for time spent on the Major League roster.
So this backs up everything @zimaane said above.
Yes and no, depending on how you define “minor league baseball.”
There is an officially-named Minor League Baseball organization of various leagues, and it is true that all of the teams in those leagues (and their players) are affiliated with a specific MLB team.
However, there still are numerous independent “minor league” teams and leagues, and while some are “partner leagues” with MLB, the teams in those leagues have no direct affiliation with MLB teams, and AFAICT, their players aren’t under contract with MLB teams.
True (and I love Banana Ball so freaking much) but generally if you are talking about a transition between the minor and major leagues, I assume the question is about minor league play affiliated with MLB, since that’s the normal progression.
My closest minor league club is the Somerset Patriots. For most of their existence they were an unaffiliated club. At some point their league partnered with MLB. The teams still didn’t have a direct connection with a MLB club but the league got some money from the big league. In exchange things like rule changes were tested out there. I saw the extra man on second in extra innings rule happen a couple of years before it came to the majors. The level of play was in the high A to low AA area.
A couple of years ago the team changed hands and it became the Yankees AA team. I saw Volpe, Austin Wells and Jasson Dominguez play together.
That is a very recent development. In the last CBA they negotiated higher minor league minimums. They were ridiculously low. It’s one of the big hurdles to get over. Many players just can’t afford to keep playing, especially if they have families. Often minor league teams will ask for local families to volunteer to board players for free.
After seeing years of unaffiliated ball I can tell you it’s rare and nearly impossible to make it to the big leagues from there. There were always players who got dumped from big organizations that were trying to make it back. There were a few cases of players getting picked up by MLB organizations but very few ever saw time in the majors.
As for the Bananas, they’ve had a handful who were drafted but from what I can tell none have ever gotten past the minors.
The example who always comes to my mind – though not a great example, as he had been a superstar player – was Rickey Henderson. In 2002, at age 43, he played for the Red Sox, and became a free agent after that season. He didn’t get an offer from an MLB team in early 2003, and wound up playing for the independent Newark Bears, at age 44.
Henderson was named the MVP in the Atlantic League’s All-Star Game, and then was signed by the Dodgers in mid-July, for whom he played (not particularly well) in 30 games, before finally hanging up his spikes.