39IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG TO SEE WHY THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC IS ONE OF THE MOST
DANGEROUS PLACES IN THE WORLD TO DRIVE.
Santo Domingo traffic is grinding, the roads
are in rough shape and the drivers are aggres-
sive.
Seeing people drive on the wrong side of the
road is common. Your horn is your turn signal.
Motorcycles weave in and out of traffic while
pedestrians playing human Frogger dart across
the highway.
If a driver blows through a red light past a
police officer, he probably won’t get pulled
over. There are traffic laws, but they’re loosely
enforced—especially after dark—so the roads
turn into chaos.
Major League Baseball has used a similar
approach to police free agent signings in the
Dominican Republic and the rest of the inter-
national market, particularly when it comes to
regulating players agreeing to deals with teams
years before they’re eligible to sign. Instead of
scouting players at 16, when they become eli-
gible to sign pro contracts, teams are reaching
agreements to sign players when they’re 13 and
14.
Players committing before the signing peri-
od opens annually on July 2 isn’t new, but the
speed of those deals has accelerated over the
past two years. Those commitments used to
come right before July 2. Then it stretched out
to a few months before. By 2015, there were
cases of players reaching agreements more
than a year before they were eligible to sign. In
2017, things slowed down temporarily. Teams
had been allowed to blow through international
bonus pools up to that point, but until the new
Collective Bargaining Agreement came through
in December 2016, nobody knew whether there
would be an international draft or what the
rules were going to be for 2017.
Since 2017, the bonus pools have been hard
capped, meaning teams have finite resources
and no more future signing restriction penalties
for exceeding their pools. So once teams commit
all or most of their 2019 pool, they turn their
attention to the 2020 class, then repeat for 2021
and 2022. It has spiraled to the point of creat-
ing widespread dissatisfaction with the current
system, among both scouts and trainers, and
among both those in favor of a draft and those
opposed.
None of that is a secret. MLB knows what’s
happening. It’s not about one team or a couple
teams. It’s all 30 clubs trying to keep up with
each other, and it happens systemically because
MLB indirectly gives teams the green light
allowing it to happen.
From MLB’s perspective, coming up with
a practical way to prevent teams from early
QUINN HARRIS/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGEScommitments is more complicated, if it’s to
INSIDETop names to
know for this
year’s July 2
international
signing periodbe implemented in a way that’s equal to all 30
clubs. MLB wants to hold all clubs to the same
standard in enforcement, but making an exam-
ple of one team penalizes that club for some-
thing everyone else is doing.
“The gloves are completely off now,” one
international scouting director said. “It’s go
scout everybody. So people are coming to deals
with 2022 players, contingent upon there being
no draft. So where does this end? I think we’re
pretty good. I think other teams are pretty good.
But nobody’s good enough to scout a 13-year-
old kid.
“I can’t speak for other directors, but when
I talk to them, we’re pretty much all saying,
‘Tell us what the rules are, and whatever the
rules are, we’re going to compete against each
other.’ ”YOUTH MOVEMENT
THE BIG SHOWCASES IN LATIN AMERICA
THE LAST FEW MONTHS HAVEN’T BEEN
FOCUSED ON 2019 OR EVEN 2020 PLAYERS.
Those events now are built around 2021 and
2022 players, who are as young as 12 and 13. The
acceleration of the signing process has changed
the way trainers operate their programs.
“I hope they have the draft,” said one trainer
previously opposed to the draft. “All the train-
ers, to have a player, we used to get them at13-14 years old. Now you have to get them at
10-11 years old. So you have to carry them until
they’re 16 years old. How much money have you
spent on those guys?
“I’ve got players signed for 2021, but I still
have to buy that player gloves, equipment,
baseballs, food, trainers through 2021. And I
have to continue to get new players. So as a
result, all of us have 30-35 players. That is a
tremendous amount of cost. You sign a 2021,
you don’t get paid until 2021 or 2022. Then you
have to continue buy them gloves, equipment,
feed them, take them everywhere and still play
them at risk of them getting hurt.
“I was so depressed this week. I went to my
field and I’m looking at 10- and 11-year-olds.
It’s like going to Little League tryouts. I’m
going, ‘I can’t believe I’m looking at these kids.’
When kids are signing at 12, the alarm goes off
to the parents that the kids have to be in an
academy (of a trainer) when they’re 10 because
they’re signing them when they’re 12.”
For trainers, keeping up with demand from
teams is part of the reason they’re recruit-
ing younger players. But some of it is also the
increased competition among trainers through-
out the Dominican Republic and Venezuela to
recruit the countries’ best players. That might
not change even if MLB went to a draft or start-CONTINUED ON PAGE 40The competition
to find the next
Eloy Jimenez
has intensified
in recent years
as clubs have
focused more
resources on the
international
market. This
competition has
increased demand
for younger
prospects—some
of whom agree
to deals at age
13—which has
forced both teams
and trainers to
forecast signing
classes three years
in the future.