After the MLB First-Year Player Draft, there's another date that has always been marked in the calendars of every prospect junkies every year: July 2. That date is associated with the start of the international signing cycle, where players that come outside of the participating territories of the draft are eligible to be signed by Major League teams. However, this year's cycle has been affected by the global pandemic, and the date that international players are eligible to sign has been pushed to January 15, 2021.
The country that is heavily represented in the signing cycle is the Dominican Republic. The country is a hotbed of talent and is as passionate with the sport, if not more passionate, than the United States. Baseball in the country is everywhere. From the baseball fields to the streets and even inside a family's house, baseball is an essential part of every Dominican. However, there are still some topics to be talked upon with regards to how much baseball means to the country.
In this post, I'll cover the journey of an aspiring Dominican baseball player growing up in the current structure of the Dominican baseball pipeline, from entering the Dominican youth leagues at the age of 5, growing and participating in the Dominican equivalent of the Little League World Series until the age of 12, entering the negotiation table to verbally commit to teams as soon as the of 13, the still prevalent doping in the country and what happens to those lost into the fold as they are deemed too old to play. I've talked to an anonymous source who has connections and knowledge on these topics to make this post.
Note: I've excluded any names, including my source, in this article for confidentiality reasons. A mention of Melvin Adon is only for example purposes as his case is already known.
The country that is heavily represented in the signing cycle is the Dominican Republic. The country is a hotbed of talent and is as passionate with the sport, if not more passionate, than the United States. Baseball in the country is everywhere. From the baseball fields to the streets and even inside a family's house, baseball is an essential part of every Dominican. However, there are still some topics to be talked upon with regards to how much baseball means to the country.
In this post, I'll cover the journey of an aspiring Dominican baseball player growing up in the current structure of the Dominican baseball pipeline, from entering the Dominican youth leagues at the age of 5, growing and participating in the Dominican equivalent of the Little League World Series until the age of 12, entering the negotiation table to verbally commit to teams as soon as the of 13, the still prevalent doping in the country and what happens to those lost into the fold as they are deemed too old to play. I've talked to an anonymous source who has connections and knowledge on these topics to make this post.
Note: I've excluded any names, including my source, in this article for confidentiality reasons. A mention of Melvin Adon is only for example purposes as his case is already known.
In the Dominican Republic, the academies are segregated in two, mainly because of the age demographic: academies that caters ages 5-12 and an academy that caters ages 13-16. The start of a typical Dominican's baseball career begins when he enrolls to academics dedicated to age 5-12 called "ligas". These ligas does not have any affiliation with the MLB and this is a chance for the Dominican parents to have their kids play organized baseball recreationally. The ligas are massive in the country, where each neighborhood has 1 to 2 community-run stadiums and each stadium can host 2-3 separate leagues annually.
How These Ligas Are Funded
These leagues are funded in a "pay to play" system where the families pay so that their kids get the chance to play. The pays, typically on a weekly or monthly basis, depend on the social status of the neighborhood. If you are living in a city like Santo Domingo and you live in a well-off household, it will cost you around 8.50 USD a week per kid. In a middle class neighborhood, it will cost you around 5.10 USD a week per kid. If you live deep in the province and you don't have a lot to pay, it will cost you around 1.70 USD per kid a week.
That's just so that you can get your kid inside the ligas, like a membership fee. The parents also have to pay for their kid's equipment. And I mean all of it: gloves, uniform, bats and cleats. We all know that baseball equipment are expensive so to put things into perspective: the monthly minimum wage in the Dominican Republic depends on the type of work and the location of your work.
If you are working inside a foreign trade zone, or FTZ, you can earn up to 166 USD per month. If you are working outside the FTZ, you can earn in the range of 188 USD to 309 USD per month depending on the size of the company. If you are working in the public sector, you can earn around 117 USD per month. But if you are working as a farmer or a sugarcane worker, you will only earn up to 6 USD a day for the farmers who work 10 hours a day, and 2.50 USD a day for the sugarcane workers who work 8 hours daily.
Those poor families have their work cut out for them if they want their child to play baseball. If they purchase equipment from second or third-class brands, it's going to cost them usually a month worth of their salary. If they really want their kids to use the branded baseball equipment like a Rawlings' glove, it's going to cost them around 3-4 months' worth of their salary.
Most of the time, those poor families really have little to no chance of purchasing second to third-class equipment, let alone the branded ones, so it's typical for their kids to wear "hand me down" or uniforms passed on to them by other kids, used-up or makeshift gloves and are barefoot on the dirt.
Education Is Important But...
The kids receive good baseball education from the coaches, who work on a wide range of things such as flexibility, strength, hitting in BPs, pitching, etc. The kids in the United States or in other countries typically start the country start hitting baseballs with metal/aluminum bats or BBCor in college and it's not a surprise at times that some have their first rodeo with a wooden bat in the Cape Cod League in college or in the WWBA in high school.
But in the Dominican, kids start using wooden bats as early as the age of 8, especially if the coaches recognize that a kid has potential, in order for the kids to get used to the feel and weight of the timber. If the coaches see that you got the talent, you will be given a lot of support.
If the kids are pitchers, it's a shocking fact that some kids are already throwing curveballs at such a young age. There are plenty of possible reasons that are a reason for it, from kids being asked to throw curveballs by coaches to kids being ultra competitive that they throw a curveball in order to win but against the discretion of the coaches and the family. Nonetheless, throwing a curveball at such a young age puts tremendous stress on the elbow and with the kids still having developing ligaments at this age, there is a big chance that some would blow out their elbows way too soon and ruin their baseball journey.
It is not an unusual occurrence that these kids miss school a lot because they are on their youth academies and working on their craft at such an early age. Typically, the kids who study in private schools in the country receive high-quality education while the those who are students in the public schools don't usually receive the quality education that are needed. However, when they graduated the youth leagues and they proceed to the next level, they abandon their education altogether and start to work in the academies in order to get to the big leagues.
The main reason that the kids basically punt their education with the hopes of becoming a big leaguer and the main reason that the Dominican Republic produced a lot of MLB talent over the years is that the poor families are willing to take that risk in order for the kids to attain their dreams of reaching the Majors. There are a lot of parents and single mothers who are working their butt off daily, away from their kids, to lead their kids on the path of becoming something important in the future, pro baseball player or not.
It is pretty common to have kids being raised by their grandparents without knowing their parents' whereabouts as they are primarily focused on playing baseball and there are a lot of instances where the kids will meet their parents once again after a long time on the day where they will sign their pro contracts. So you will hear a lot of cases that they always want to build their mothers a house because the kids are grateful for the sacrifices that their parents made in order for them to become professional baseball players.
The Little League World Series Of The Dominicans
In the United States, there is the Little League World Series and in Japan, there is the Summer Koshien tournament (for the high school ranks). In the Dominican Republic, the ligas do have their provincial tournaments and the winners from those provinces duke it out in several regional tournaments with several sponsors from abroad. There are also mini tournaments that are being organized in the neighborhood by Dominican players, either current and/or former Major Leaguers, where roughly 80% of them organize such events.
However, there is one league that triumphs them all, the annual national tournament and the only children's tournament in the country that can be watched via television, the Clásico Scotiabank de Pequeñas Ligas (CSDPL). It is televised on CDN SportsMax, the only Dominican channel with 24-hours of sports coverage and is the official channel of Major League Baseball in the country so you know that this event is a big deal.
The league is a part of the Scotiabank Community Baseball Program launched in 2014 by the Canadian bank Scotiabank (obviously) that aimed to promote the sport of baseball in the Dominican youth. The league is organized by sports reporter Neftali Ruiz and television producer Ambiorix Vidal and has former Dominican Major Leaguer Moises Alou as its ambassador/prominent face. The event is being held at the Centro Olimpico Juan Pablo Duarte complex and the umpires that are employed in the tournament are the same as the Dominican Republic Professional Baseball League or LIDOM, or in Layman's term the Dominican winter leagues. The winners in the tournament will play in the Scotiabank Little League International Classic where they will face off against national teams from four other countries.
The league started to cover the whole country in 2017 and throughout the entire duration of the tournament so far, a total of more than 3,000 Dominican children participated in the said event. The uniforms and other equipment are provided in the event and there are also events such as Home Run Derby and an All-Star Game. The winners and their coaches/academies receive prizes but has also been affected by the on-going pandemic as they suspended their play this year.
The event is still fairly young so there are not yet a handful of known names that have been a product of the tournament but there's a big potential that this event will become a hotbed of talent, if not already. It can be treated as sort of a showcase with several scouts from Major League clubs watching the kids especially those who they have their eye on as a potential signing after the tournament albeit verbally due to how the current trend of signing Dominican prospects work.
You can follow the league in their Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages with full games, highlights and interviews.
The Second Half: DR Teenage Academies
Once they moved past the age of 12, MLB teams really starts to dig deep on these Dominican pre-teenagers and start to verbally commit to deals as early as the age of 13 nowadays as the kids start to transition from the ligas to the bigger and more dedicated baseball academies that caters the age of 13-16. The most prominent examples of these academies are Banana and Amauris Nina. The ones who are going from town to town scouting for talent and take them to those academies are called buscones.
The reports of the USA Today article are indeed correct as one told me that there is a 13 year old Dominican that is eligible to sign in the 2023 international cycle is already verbally committed to a National League squad (not the Giants) for 4.3 million USD. With these kids still way too young to talk about the economics and money, the owners of the academies are handling the contract talks with MLB teams.
The kids are represented by the owners of both academies, the ones handling the youth league and the teenage academies, as well as the parents or guardians. The current structure is that the signing bonus is split into three once verbally done: 50% goes to the player and their family, 40% goes to the big academies and the 10% goes to the youth academies. So of course, the better the player, the higher the potential bonus, the more money that goes in into the academies.
When deciding for the signing bonus and what team the kids will elect to sign once eligible, there could have been plenty of factors to consider like squads offering life benefits to the players, proper education, additional assistance in whatever form. But for the majority of the case, it all boils down to the highest bidder and I don't blame them. When you are a kid living in a family below the poverty line and you are in a position to help raise your family out of the slums and live a more comfortable and stable life in just a snap, you've got to take the 100,000 USD right now as compared to entering the grueling years of entering the workforce.
Once inside the academy, the kids treat it like a usual 8-5 work: 4 hours in the morning session, lunch break, 4 hours in the afternoon. These kids do not receive any pay while inside the academy but they are provided free meals. These kids only practice daily, and are usually only playing against each other if there is 9v9 baseball that's happening. Typically, when a team is scouting a prospect that's verbally committed to another team, the only way to check on them is through video.
Once inside the academy, the kids treat it like a usual 8-5 work: 4 hours in the morning session, lunch break, 4 hours in the afternoon. These kids do not receive any pay while inside the academy but they are provided free meals. These kids only practice daily, and are usually only playing against each other if there is 9v9 baseball that's happening. Typically, when a team is scouting a prospect that's verbally committed to another team, the only way to check on them is through video.
Rope A Dope
There have been several issues with the Dominican Republic with regards to the international cycle that is still pretty prevalent to this day. One of them is doping. Either intentional or unintentional, there are still prevalent cases of doping, via supplements, in the country for the past three decades. The typical cases come from the kids in the 12-15 range.
If you think of guys who have hit at such long home runs at such a young age, guys like Bryce Harper and Blaze Jordan do come to mind, especially Jordan who became an Internet sensation after hitting two 500 foot home runs with a metal bat in a power showcase on Globe Life Park as a 13 year old and became the 3rd round selection of the Boston Red Sox in this year's draft. In the Dominican, there are also showcases, the primary way of getting scouted in the country, where they held it at the Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal, the only stadium in the country to host two Dominican winter league teams. Using a wooden bat, there have been instances of kids aged 14-15 hitting bombs north of 400 feet in estimated distance which is almost unheard of, especially with a wooden bat. In that case, the kids are almost certainly taking some sort of steroid from the age of 12-13.
Doping is also linked to some kids having health issues at such an early age that could result to some teams dropping their verbal commitments while also destroying their own body. The most recent case that has happened is there is a 17 year old who had his leg amputated due to a horse steroid injected into his body last year.
MLB knows this topic for decades, and has started to address this topic a couple of years ago. In this Forbes article, the “participating trainers will enroll their players in MLB’s drug testing program, submit themselves and their employees to background checks, keep updated records of amateur players in their care, and comply with MLB rules regarding international player signings.”
MLB could have acted on this topic a lot sooner not just to straighten up all of the issues that have been prevalent in the country with regards to the international cycle but most especially to keep the health of those teenagers in order. Who knows how many of those Dominican teenagers in the past that had their baseball dreams shattered because of health issues brought upon by injecting those steroids? They can't help it because if it helps them get signed and help their family live a better life in the Dominican, they would do it even if it there's a big risk on their health.
If you think of guys who have hit at such long home runs at such a young age, guys like Bryce Harper and Blaze Jordan do come to mind, especially Jordan who became an Internet sensation after hitting two 500 foot home runs with a metal bat in a power showcase on Globe Life Park as a 13 year old and became the 3rd round selection of the Boston Red Sox in this year's draft. In the Dominican, there are also showcases, the primary way of getting scouted in the country, where they held it at the Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal, the only stadium in the country to host two Dominican winter league teams. Using a wooden bat, there have been instances of kids aged 14-15 hitting bombs north of 400 feet in estimated distance which is almost unheard of, especially with a wooden bat. In that case, the kids are almost certainly taking some sort of steroid from the age of 12-13.
Doping is also linked to some kids having health issues at such an early age that could result to some teams dropping their verbal commitments while also destroying their own body. The most recent case that has happened is there is a 17 year old who had his leg amputated due to a horse steroid injected into his body last year.
MLB knows this topic for decades, and has started to address this topic a couple of years ago. In this Forbes article, the “participating trainers will enroll their players in MLB’s drug testing program, submit themselves and their employees to background checks, keep updated records of amateur players in their care, and comply with MLB rules regarding international player signings.”
MLB could have acted on this topic a lot sooner not just to straighten up all of the issues that have been prevalent in the country with regards to the international cycle but most especially to keep the health of those teenagers in order. Who knows how many of those Dominican teenagers in the past that had their baseball dreams shattered because of health issues brought upon by injecting those steroids? They can't help it because if it helps them get signed and help their family live a better life in the Dominican, they would do it even if it there's a big risk on their health.
Lost Stars
There are times that deals are not made between the MLB scouts and the academies and as a result, the kid is lost. In order to try to avoid losing those talents to the void, a package deal is negotiated where if a scout wants a player, the scout has to sign a lesser player as well in order for the deal to push through.
When the player that a club verbally commit over the course of three years in the academy does not improve their stock or felt that they plateaued, the club typically doesn't remove their offer but will lower the initial deal on their final proposal. There are plenty of reasons that you can get kicked out of the teenage academy but two of the prominent reasons are "medical" with doping as one of the main causes and for disciplinary reasons. This results to other players getting pushed in and thus, getting their chance to shine.
In the Dominican Republic, the concept of age discrimination is a big deal because if you are a Dominican is already 15 to 16 years old and is new to the sport, there are only a handful or less leagues that is available for them to showcase their skills, like the DPL program, and is considered "too old" to enter an academy. Also, colleges in the country do not organize any baseball tournaments and other sporting events so that adds to the pressure of starting young. If you are like 14 years old and never played, you are only slotted to be a pitcher for the most part.
There are cases where kids that have bidders at age 13 and has a respectable bonus but teams back out of their bids because the scouts saw him as very skinny and then one team scooped him up when he is a year or two older for just a fraction of a price, saving that prospect from being forgotten. That is essentially true for one current Giants top prospect.
There are other cases that a pitcher rejected a 10,000 USD offer to him by a club and he now throws 92-93 MPH but still hasn't been able to sign any contract. There have been cases where a pitcher gets signed even if he is old, like Melvin Adon of the Giants where he's signed at the age of 20, close to 21 years old. In the case of pitchers, there's still a glimmer of hope. If you are a hitting prospect, the chances are slim to none.
If you ever wonder what happens to those lost stars, they abandon the sport altogether and just go to work or resume their education.
Closing Thoughts
I am always fascinated to read and hear stories about the Dominican Republic because I am fascinated about their culture and how ingrained baseball is into the country from the kids to the teens. The country basically lives and breathes baseball. They do not see baseball not only as a great sport but also as a ticket to free themselves out of poverty and unemployment. From doping to falsifying their age to other shady methods, these kids are willing to risk it all just to provide for their family.
Do I agree with their methods? Definitely not as I would rather stay clean rather than getting my hands dirty. However, I do understand their reasons behind because they want to garner as high of a signing bonus as they can, let alone get a signing from a MLB team with the hopes of reaching the Majors. And I mean, the system stays that way because it's hard to break a tradition with its roots running deep. It is really hard to potentially have an international draft because of the current system. I mean, why wait for reaching the age of 18 to earn the money if you can commit to it 5 years earlier?
If you learned something new on this one, I'm happy to hear that. I definitely did when I was on the process of writing this one. I look forward to keep telling these kind of stories in the future and I'll see you soon.
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