Email a copy of 'Dominican Scouts, MLB At Impasse Over Prospects' to a friend
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By Nick Collias | at
Email a copy of 'Dominican Scouts, MLB At Impasse Over Prospects' to a friend
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flex0us
Ok. Let`s make a little exercise. Imagine you are Bud Selig for a second (no, I know its not easy). You are running a multi million dollar business, which made the innovative and inteligent decision in the 1980’s to exploit foreign talent by paying dimes and pennies. You knew that this cheap talent was coming along with some baggage but you didnt care because there was no direct impact to your business (steroids were not prohibited, age fraud hadnt be discovered, buscones was just another latin jargon). Rapidly this decision to expand resulted so great that you also opened academies in Venezuela, and sent scouts to Central America. But then, 9-11 comes, and with it comes more restriction for politics to enter the US and with that you find out that your latin gems are getting older by the minute (literally), but you still dont care, because, after all, the multiplicity of birthdays would serve to entertain guys in the dougout. Then the PED issue begin to emerge and you try to salvage the damage by testing, and you find out your latin gems are consuming horse chemicals, not even found in the states, and now you are beginning to worry. Then you find that you`re top directors and even general managers are scamming major league teams by overpricing the bonus of prospects and sharing then with the buscones, and now you are really getting pissed. Moreover, you find out that the pennies you were paying in the 90’s have progressed into million dollar bonuses given in an open and not regulated market and are greatly surpassing your own boys in the 50 flag nation. Now you decide to take charge and send a guy who is known to be bold in his actions but also Ivy League polite. Now that you read all that you can come to 2 conclusions. Number 1: No way in the world that Alderson was sent to DR to implement other measures other than a draft. Number 2: We, domincans, had it coming!
carlos2026
Ditto Flex,
MLB has always known Latin Players were Older, But looking the other way because there bonus’s were pennies on the dollar.
Dominican Republic as an Under Developed country and poverty strucken country took the cheeting too far by insted of a kid lying about age just to get a chance to play.Now they try to get millions of dollars and where there is Money comes crooks. You would be surprised how many ways a bonus gets split once the kid signs. Smaller Buscones sell player to Bigger Buscons who sell a percentage to a Agent who then Bribs MLB Investigators with bonus $ and the Occaional Kickback to Scout. Kick backs to People posing as kids Parents and keeping people who know about the Scam Quite. The sad Part is the Actual Player is still getting pennies on the Dollar. Sad Situation. Hopefully it can get cleaned up without a Draft. This way Dominican Players can continue with the Oportunity to play
Jorge
The fear many dominicans have is that the draft will decrease significantly the number of players signed, as has happened in Puerto Rico. I mean, buscones definitely fear their pockets will not get as much money as now, but they are not all dominicans!!
What is unfair is, an american player can be drafted and signed at the age of 22. If you are dominican, and you are 20, forget it. Why? well, americans took less time across the minors before they reach the majors. But, because if you are 19 you have a hard time getting signed, a lot of them lie about their age. And that was always that way, since dominicans started playing in MLB. Everybody knew that, of course MLB knew it.
BTW, 99% of the players signed still get pennies, bonuses of 5000 dollars or maybe 15000. Only a few get million dollar bonuses (a terrible idea, I don’t know any dominican player in the MLB who received a million dollar bonus, apparently they don’t work hard once they get so much money).
swheatle
First off, the draft is designed to maximize the profits of the owners by limiting player leverage by not having a true free agent market for unsigned players. But most of these (US) players have a high school educations with possibilities of scholarships for higher education.
But unsigned foreign players do not have this institutional fall back of education. How many Dominicans have this option? How many are giving up a high school education for baseball at age 16? What fall back positions to these players have?
And now MLB wants to squeeze this group like US players by instating a world draft?
Sorry, but this reeks of imperialism.
willclarksgauchos
While your humanitarian instinct is noble, it is not the job of MLB to provide better lives for people in foreign countries. The job of MLB is to find and sign talent to provide a product on a baseball diamond. Any feign of aid or education to people in foreign countries is an attempt to curry favor with them and sign them.
A draft is also protection for these players from being exploited by their street hustler agents. It also normalizes the hiring process in a way. They can create standard practices for ascertaining the true background of the players.