Major League Baseball Is Back, But International Draft Remains A Divisive And Unresolved Issue

While Major League Baseball and the roughly 1,200 players rejoiced over the return of America’s pastime Thursday — the end of a 99-day lockout after the 30 team owners and the union reached an agreement on a new labor deal — the negotiations were nearly torpedoed in the 11th hour.

The league tried to strong-arm an international draft as part of the new collective-bargaining agreement (CBA), but instead the issue was tabled, for now, and the Players Association has until late July to decide on whether or not an international draft should be implemented, starting in 2024.

But baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners received swift blowback from players regarding the league’s negotiating tactics on that front.

“I was in FL. We never offered the int’l Draft,” New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, a member of the union’s executive subcommittee, tweeted late Wednesday, referring to the week-long bargaining session in Jupiter, Florida that ended without a new CBA deal. “We did discuss it, but MLB told us they were NOT going to offer anything for it. At that point, we informed all players & agreed to no draft. This is MLB muddying the waters & deflecting blame.”

Scherzer’s Mets teammate, shortstop Francisco Lindor, another member of the union’s executive subcommittee, also blasted the league: “The (Players Association) kept us informed about MLB’s proposals, including when the league said the draft was worth nothing and some clubs don’t even want it.”

Now that a new five-year CBA is in place, however, the debate and discussion will not subside on one of the more vexing issues within the sport, and one that has its equal share of proponents and critics. In baseball talent-rich countries like the Dominican Republic, for example, buscones, or street agents, thrive off of the business of training and representing young prospects, with the hope that the player will score a lucrative deal with a major league club.

An international draft would likely bring an end to that section of baseball business throughout Latin America, and critics of the draft argue it’s a form of salary cap, which the Players Association has historically been opposed to in any form. Currently, amateur prospects from the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico are subject to the draft.

“On the side of the buscones and the baseball (academy) owners here in the D.R., they don’t want the international draft implemented,” said one long-time Dominican scout who’s worked for several major league clubs. “But I think personally, it’s necessary here to organize this crazy system.”

The “crazy system” that the scout refers to is the wild-west culture that has existed in the Dominican and throughout Latin America for years, where a litany of problems plagues the sport — everything from age/ID fraud; performance-enhancing drugs being legal to purchase in the D.R.; and Latin baseball prospects as young as 12 and 13 entering into verbal agreements with major league clubs, only to have scouting directors or team officials reportedly renege on some of those deals.

According to baseball’s collectively-bargained rules, international amateur free agents can sign with a major league team and be eligible for a signing bonus when they are 16. But pressure can mount for player development personnel to find the next superstar talent, which in turn can breed corrupt practices and unethical behavior — buscones or trainers or team executives skimming bonuses; teams pulling out of verbal arrangements with prospects, leaving kids and their families in financial straits.

In a 2020 USA Today Sports report, Rudy Santin, a Cuban-born baseball scout who had spent a lifetime in baseball — working for the Yankees, Giants and Rays before opening a baseball academy in the Dominican — was quoted saying he had reached out to baseball officials and even federal authorities about the underage signings problem in an effort to try and effect change for the better.

“They say, ‘Thank you for the information.’ That’s all they say,” Santin said in the USA Today report, in reference to the response Santin said he received from baseball officials when he voiced concerns about shady deals. “They don’t say anything else.”

Santin died on May 3, 2020, a month before the USA Today report was published.

Before his death, according to the report, Santin said he had also met with FBI agents who were investigating MLB’s Latin American operations, and said he had been asked to record conversations with MLB team officials. It’s unclear if federal agents are still investigating MLB in the D.R. or elsewhere in Latin America. The FBI Miami Field Office did not respond to an email request.

Santin said in the USA Today report that two of the Dominican prospects he was training had reached verbal agreements with the San Diego Padres, only to have the team later pull out of those deals. One of those players is switch-hitting Cristian Garcia, now in the Angels’ farm system.

“It was devastating to say the least,” Cristian’s father, Miguel, said in the USA Today story, referring to the alleged lost deal with the Padres. “Because (we) had made a lot of plans based on this.”

USA TODAYIn Latin America, big league clubs are exploiting prospects as young as 12, whistleblower told feds

In a recent interview, Miguel Garcia said Cristian, now 17, had signed with the Angels last year, and played in the 2021 Dominican Summer League, where he batted .232 in 45 games and played mostly first base. Miguel Garcia said his son is slated to play in the Angels’ minor-league system this year, but didn’t specify at which level.

The MLBPA did not respond to an email for comment. Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred did not field any questions about the international draft in his press conference following the announcement that a new CBA had been agreed upon by both sides. But baseball sources say an international draft would go a long way toward addressing malfeasance in the baseball business in Latin America.

As far back as 2016, Manfred was advocating for its implementation.

“My own view — and it’s been this view for a long time — is that sooner or later, it would be better if players, no matter from where they hail, enter the game through the same type of system, and that is a draft system,” Manfred said in Arizona during 2016 spring training. “It will be a topic we will spend some time on with the MLBPA over the course of the next year.”

But Eddie Dominguez, a former MLB investigator with the league’s Department of Investigations that was founded in 2008, said the unit, when he was a member, not only recommended an international draft be implemented, but that there was plenty of evidence the DOI uncovered to support the need for change in that area of the sport.

“The DOI’s work internationally was probably the most important thing we did,” said Dominguez, who along with several other DOI members, was fired by baseball in 2014. “We made inroads into PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs), but we also shined a light on how corrupt the baseball business was internationally. That was the best thing we did, was bring these issues to light. The best thing that could happen to baseball would be an international draft, if you care about kids and their families being treated poorly.”

One baseball insider said the union should have agreed to an international draft during the last CBA negotiations in 2016, but instead made concessions by having a salary cap placed on international pool money.

“The union fought (the draft) last time, much to their (detriment),” said the insider. “The union made a mistake — a draft was the least important giveaway.”

Newly-elected Baseball Hall of Fame member David Ortiz, the former Red Sox slugger, told ESPN last week that an international draft is not an issue that should be glossed over by either side.

“At the end of the day, I don’t want those kids to be affected by it. I already played baseball. I had a career,” Ortiz told ESPN. “I care about the kids being treated right. I understand MLB wants to have control over everything they do, but you’re not going to change the system overnight. Baseball is one of the secret weapons of the Dominican economy. If you talk about a draft here in the States, you have choices. You can do football, basketball. You don’t have choices [in the D.R.]. Dominican has baseball to make your way out. That’s it. You have to be careful.”