LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida will host the 2024 Caribbean Series. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By Matthew Tallarini
World Baseball Network
The 66th Caribbean Series will be held next year in Miami at loanDepot Park during late January and early February of 2024.
Appearing for the first time in the Caribbean Series will be Nicaragua, and for the second straight year, Curacao will send a team. Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic will each send teams to Miami following the playoffs in their respective winter leagues.
Colombia, Cuba, and Panama will be the three teams left out of the tournament in Miami next year. All three played in the eight-team field for the 2023 Caribbean Series that was held in Caracas, Venezuela.
The Caribbean Professional Baseball Confederation and commissioner Juan Puello Herrera will hold a press conference officially announcing the invitees on Caribbean Series Night next Saturday in Miami before the Miami Marlins take on the Chicago Cubs at 4:05 p.m. EDT.
Nicaragua will be represented by the team that wins the 2023 German Pomares Ordonez League regular season during the spring and summer season. Curacao will have a newly-minted professional winter league season for 2023-24 representing from the Federashon Di Beisbol Korsou governed body. All players playing in the winter leagues are eligible to play in the Caribbean Series next year, provided they are added as reinforcements to the qualifying teams, Puello stated to media at a press conference on April 13 at Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Curacao has not had a regular season for their winter league since the Curacao Baseball League participated in the short running of the Latin American Series, which was discontinued after 2019.
Nicaragua also participated in the Latin American Series from 2013-19, sending the winner of their Liga Beisbol Profesional Nacional winter league. Three different teams won the tournament during separate years: Leones De Leon in 2019, Gigantes De Rivas in 2016, and Tigres De Chinandega in 2017 and 2018 each won the Latin American Series when it was in operation.
Nicaragua will have to carry players that have played from the 2023-24 Liga Beisbol Profesional Nacional winter league season in order to participate in the Caribbean Series, and could possibly send a similar roster to the national team that played in Pool D of the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
Without the winners of Panama’s ProBeis, Colombia’s Liga Profesional De Beisbol, and Cuba’s new Elite League, the Caribbean Series will have a different feel by including Curacao and Nicaragua, depending on their performance against the champions of the top leagues in the Caribbean.
Panama’s Toros De Herrera won the Caribbean Series in 2019, the first year Panama sent a team to the tournament since the original run of the Caribbean Series that was held from 1949-60. Colombia’s Liga Profesional De Beisbol Caimanes De Barranquilla won in 2022 in Colombia’s third year as an invitee to the tournament.
Nicaragua’s fans, especially those in their expatriate community in Miami, showed up during the pool round of the World Baseball Classic last month for all four games. That sparked the interest of Juan Puello to invite Nicaragua to the Caribbean Series next year. Federacion Nicaraguense De Beisbol Asociados president Nemesio Porras decided for to have the winner of the 2023 German Pomares Ordonez League be the representative for Nicaragua to the 2024 Caribbean Series.
This will be the third time that Miami has hosted the Caribbean Series. Miami previously hosted the Caribbean Series in 1990 at the Orange Bowl and again in 1991 at Bobby Maduro Miami Stadium.
The 2024 Caribbean Series will be the first time in the history of the event that the tournament will be played at a Major League Baseball stadium, and could draw the focus of the United States media as international baseball attempts to attract more American fans.