Former Atlanta Braves minor league pitcher Matt Talley, now with the White Sox organization, has started a blog about being a minor league baseball player. Matt was drafted in the 28th round by Atlanta in 2011, and surprisingly released a couple of months ago. I say it's surprising because the Braves organization gave him a whopping one year and 63 innings to prove himself before letting him go.

I bet if I told a complete stranger the basics of my current situation but left out the part about professional baseball, they may consider me to be homeless. All kidding aside, let me divulge a few of the facts of my life. I live out of a suitcase. In-season living arrangements consists of cheap air mattresses, crammed apartments with minimal furniture, and hotel rooms that are so crappy they don’t even register on the 5 star scale (that’s a bit of an exaggeration). People receiving welfare checks probably make as much as I do during the season. Seriously though, during spring training and extended spring training, everyone in minor league camp got 16$ a day; that includes first rounder, 51st rounders, and everything in between. This may seem reasonable until you consider the hours put in. Most people get to the park about 7:00 A.M. and probably won’t return to the hotel until 5:00; thus, we have a 10 hour work day and a consequent hourly wage of a whopping $1.60/ hour.

It's definitely worth reading his entire blog post.

I've always been fascinated by the scores of players that cycle through the minor leagues, and thanks to blogs and twitter we get a glimpse into many aspects of their lives. Hopefully Matt can keep posting about his experiences in the minors. I'll be following along. You can also follow him on twitter here.