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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, June 20, 2014
Players from Puerto Rico are subject to the Major League draft, which, kills the incentive for teams and scouts to go there and develop teenage talent like they do in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. Since the imposition of the draft in Puerto Rico in 1990, the once rich vein of talent heading from there to the big leagues has all but dried up.
But not to worry, this summer league is sure to turn around 25 years of decline. Problem meet solution.
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1. Robert in Manhattan Beach Posted: June 20, 2014 at 10:01 AM (#4731354)Teams don't develop (amateur) teenage talent in the D.R. or Venezuela, either. They develop players after they've been signed, just like teams do with players from anywhere else.
There's far more wealth in P.R. than there is in the D.R. or Venezuela, but somehow thousands of kids in those countries find their way to baseball fields (or parking lots, or streets) and play. The author, like the guy here from The Economist, seems to have reversed the cause and effect. Fewer kids are playing baseball in Puerto Rico because it's relatively wealthy, not because of a lack of wealth.
Also, Puerto Rico is only 100 miles by 35 miles. How expensive could an "expensive youth league" be on an island where one would never have to stay overnight in a hotel?
No, it wouldn't.
And also because treating Puerto Ricans differently than it treats other U.S. citizens would all but invite a legal challenge.
It can be a very long drive from say, San Juan to Guayamo. Roads aren't exactly interstates, and no other means of getting around (well, you could fly. Or sail).
If the worst case is an occasional 3-hour car trip, then Puerto Rican baseball players are in great shape.
That's what some in P.R. claim, but if it was as simple as that, amateur leagues and academies would have sprouted up like they have in the D.R., Venezuela, and elsewhere, where dozens of non-MLB-affiliated people run such leagues and facilities for profit.
***
Interesting; I had never heard of this league. The logistics and travel expenses had to be massive. Quite an undertaking, at least for 1979.
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