Try to imagine Major League Baseball without the Dominican Republic.
No Juan Marichal. No Felipe Alou. No Pedro Martinez. No Vladimir Guerrero, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez; no Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes or Robinson Cano. Under this scenario, Toronto's Jose Bautista, the top vote-getter at Tuesday's All-Star Game, would deatomize along with his 28 home runs.
And yet as hard as it is to distance this nation from our national pastime, here's a striking thought: the Dominican influence is about to grow.
During the past year and a half, Major League Baseball has begun putting an entirely new evaluation system in place in the Dominican Republic, one that includes stepped-up drug testing and identity verification and the first legitimate talent-evaluation process the country has known. If all goes as planned, the efforts should bring something that's been sorely missing in this country when it comes to analyzing baseball talent: a high level of comfort and certitude.
By all indications, as the changes begin to take hold, it's making what has long been one of the best bargains in sports even better. "The system is so much more efficient," said Raymond Abreu, director of Latin American operations for the Oakland A's—who says his team has better information than ever on the country's top prospects. "All we used to have was a report on a workout."
It's no secret that there's baseball gold in the hills of this nation of 10 million, and that major-league teams have spent many years feasting on it. With 86 native Dominicans on opening-day rosters this season, the country accounts for about 10% of the big leagues. And with 1,723 minor-league players, it accounts for 24% of baseball's farm system. All 30 major-league teams operate academies in the Dominican Republic to train young aspiring ballplayers. The Milwaukee Brewers, who decided to cease operations in 2003, re-opened their academy last year.
"We are in this for the duration," said Carlos Alfonso, director of international operations for the Tampa Bay Rays. "This is where the vast majority of international talent comes from."
Last year, the average signing bonus for a Dominican teenager was about half of what it was for players taken in Major League Baseball's June amateur draft. In 2009 and 2010, Major League clubs spent about $94,000, on average, for each Dominican player they signed. The average for players taken in last year's amateur draft was nearly $200,000.
For teams, this talent trove has always come with an element of risk: the unregulated wild-west atmosphere in the Dominican Republic that often leaves baseball executives feeling like they got fleeced. Players have produced false birth documents to claim they're younger than they actually are. Predatory agents abound, as do performance-enhancing drugs. Several major-league teams have fired Dominican scouts for allegedly taking kickbacks in return for good reports.
Since the country has nothing remotely like the organized structure of U.S. scholastic and travel baseball, major-league teams used to have limited chances to scout players. Teams would have to decide to lavish six- and seven-figure offers on 15 and 16-year-olds based on little more than a series of workouts.
Jorge Perez-Diaz, the Harvard-trained lawyer from Puerto Rico who now directs Latin American oversight for MLB, said the teams were experiencing "an unreasonable amount of fraud and use of drugs" among Dominican prospects "We needed to do this to make the industry sustainable here for the long-term."
Baseball's amateur draft is limited to players from the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories who have graduated, or are about to graduate, from high school. Foreign players, including Dominicans, must be signed as free agents sometime after July 2 of the year they turn 16.
MLB executive Sandy Alderson (who is now the New York Mets general manager) was the first to try to fix the situation in the Dominican Republic. Last year, he made it clear baseball was no longer interested in players who didn't pass drug tests or whose identities couldn't withstand extensive verification.
One of the most significant changes the league made was to institute a weekly MLB-sponsored tournament known as Torneo Supremo. Every Monday this spring and summer, 120 prospects like Jhoan Urena, a 16-year-old third baseman, rise early to take long bus rides to a baseball complex on the southern coast to participate. The Torneo's team rosters include dozens of older players who went unsigned the year they turned 16. The goal is to allow teams to extensively scout some of the country's top unsigned players before throwing millions at them. "It's an attempt at regulating the madness," said Charisse Espinosa-Dash, an agent who specializes in representing young Dominicans.
The Torneo seems to be creating more opportunities for Dominican players. So far this year, a dozen Torneo players have signed contracts with bonuses whose combined value exceeds $1 million. Nomar Mazara, who became eligible on July 2, signed a deal this month with the Texas Rangers that included a record signing bonus of nearly $5 million.
Payouts like these are what keep bringing back Andres Corporan, a 17-year-old outfielder from Santo Domingo, and Eudy Joseph, a 17-year-old pitcher from El Seybo. After a rain-soaked workout at the Phillies academy last week, Joseph said he thought he was going to get a contract offer last year, but didn't. "This is the best opportunity, I have," he said.
The changes haven't sat well with some Dominican agents and trainers, known as Buscones, who make their livings developing Dominican prospects and taking a percentage of their signing bonuses.
Their fear is that MLB, despite statements to the contrary, will shut them out by trying to include Dominican players in the amateur draft.
"It's all about controlling the signing bonus money," said Edgar Mercedes, one of the country's most highly regarded trainers.
Mercedes argued that the Dominican player-development system doesn't need fixing. "At 14, kids here are getting the training that U.S. kids don't get until they are 18, playing every day, working with professionals," he said.
As a group, Dominican-born players consistently punch above their weight in the major leagues. Last season, they accounted for 8.9% of baseball's non-pitchers but accounted for 10.8% of all runs scored—a pattern that has held since 2002. Dominican pitchers, meanwhile, have had a lower earned-run average than the league as a whole in five of the past 10 seasons.
"The talent is the talent," said Stan Kasten, the former president of the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals. "The big change is that we are a lot more diligent and sensitive about getting real and accurate information."
Write to Matthew Futterman at
matthew.futterman@wsj.com
Dominican Republic Prepares for Dominance in Major League Baseball - WSJ.com
