A report in Dominican newspaper Diario Libre over the weekend said Major League Baseball clubs are agreeing to deals with players in the island nation years before they are eligible to sign contracts with MLB clubs.
The report, written in Spanish by Diario Libre sports editor Nathanel Perez Nero, said that MLB “teams are already closing pre-agreements with Dominican children who will be available to sign in 2029 and even 2030,” citing anonymous sources who told Perez Nero that one Dominican child born in 2013 showed enough power with the bat before age 10 that his parents attempted to negotiate a $300,000 payment in exchange for a percentage of the child’s signing bonus.
While that deal never came to fruition — the parents’ asking price was too high, it would seem — the Diario Libre reported that the boy’s parents were able to secure a payment of $70,000 in exchange for his coach getting between 40% and 50% of the boy’s bonus when he signs with an MLB club.
“The bet is expected to pay off for the coach who made the investment, since the boy has already ‘promised’ to be recruited by an American League team for $5 million in January 2030,” the Diario Libre says citing unnamed sources. The boy at the center of the story, will turn 12 years old this year, is already a student in Boca Chica, a seaside town east of the country’s capital of Santo Domingo, near the academy of the MLB club with which he has reportedly reached an agreement.
Three MLB clubs have academies in Boca Chica, the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins of the National League and the Texas Rangers of the American League.
Diario Libre also relayed the story of a Dominican child who would be eligible to sign with an MLB club in 2029. His coach paid the boy’s father $80,000 in 2023. Two years later, the report says, there is agreement for a signing bonus of around $4 million for the boy, a percentage of which would be paid to the coach.
Of course, all these agreements could be essentially worthless should the next Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the labor union that represents MLB’s players, should include an international draft.
Currently, MLB’s annual draft only covers players who live in the United States, Canada, or a U.S. territory such as Puerto Rico or Guam. International players are considered free agents and are eligible to be signed during the annual international free agent signing period. They must be at least 16 or will turn 16 years of age prior to Sept. 1 of the current signing period, and teams are limited to paying out a set amount of money in signing bonuses to international free agent players each year. According to MLB’s page covering the international free agent rules, “Foreign professionals — defined as players who are at least 25 years of age and have played as a professional in a foreign league recognized by Major League Baseball for a minimum of six seasons — maintain exemption from the international bonus pool.”
That could all change after the 2026 season. On Dec. 1, 2026, the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires, and MLB and the MLBPA will have to negotiate a new pact. Among the items Major League Baseball’s owners are expected to push for is an international draft, which would preclude negotiating agreements with players who aren’t eligible to be signed for years such as the ones cited in Diario Libre’s story.
Ownership attempted to negotiate an international draft in the current CBA, which was negotiated prior to the start of the 2022 season, ending a 99-day lockout, and finalized in May of 2023. Major League Baseball was willing to end the qualifying offer system, by which teams can make an offer to a free agent player who was on their roster the previous season for a one-year deal for the average salary of MLB’s top 125 highest paid players. If the player rejects the qualifying offer and signs with another club, his previous team receives compensatory draft picks at the upcoming MLB Draft.
But the MLBPA sees an international draft as a major hurdle, and many Latin players, who form a large portion of the union’s rank-and-file, are opposed to such a draft, which would likely restrict how much money players from outside the U.S. can earn in signing bonuses.
Whether the two sides can reconcile their differences over a potential international draft remains to be seen, as a work stoppage following the 2026 season seems inevitable.
Photo: Jasson Domínguez of the New York Yankees smiles during Spring Training at George M. Steinbrenner Field on February 23, 2023 in Tampa, Florida. Dominguez signed a $5.1 million deal with the Yankees as an international free agent inn 2019. (Photo by New York Yankees/Getty Images)
