Where Are All The PR Players?

[Wolf Hopper]

Who are the great and young PR players in the game today?

BBA recently did a story on this - that the PR pipeline is drying up - - - teams can no longer sign the PR kids at 15-16 and develop them - - so, instead, they sit in PR, with little ball to play, and their skills take a dive in the time they have to wait to be drafted.

Do you agree with this?

[poorme]

i haven't read the article yet. seems like if you could play baseball at 13-14 you could play at 15-16. what's the signing age? i thought it was 16.

maybe it has something to do with the economic development of puerto rico

[Wolf Hopper]

Here's the feature:

Flow of Puerto Rican talent slows, but why?
By Alan Schwarz, Baseball America
March 19, 2003

CAGUAS, P.R.–The line is impossible not to draw. From 1982-88, major league teams signed teenagers out of Puerto Rico who changed the face of the major leagues: Benito Santiago, Ruben Sierra, Roberto and Sandy Alomar, Bernie Williams, Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Carlos Delgado and more. Major League Baseball responded to rising bonuses in 1989 by making Puerto Ricans subject to the draft, and nothing approaching that caliber of talent has emerged since.

Carlos Beltran, Jose Vidro and Javier Vazquez–all of whom turned pro through the draft–are above-average major leaguers, but the steady export of superstars from Puerto Rico stopped almost immediately after the draft appeared. Over the past five years, major league teams have signed an average of 28 Puerto Ricans a year, down 24 percent from the previous five, when there were two fewer teams. Not one of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects was signed off the island, and just two of the 119 players in Top 10 Prospects lists who were drafted out of high school came from Puerto Rico.

Many scouts blame the fact that players who used to sign at 16 now have to wait until they’re 18, just like their counterparts in the mainland United States. Because there is no high school baseball in Puerto Rico, those two extra years are spent playing sporadic amateur ball rather than getting professional instruction.

It all sounds simple: cause, effect, explanation. But after years of claiming the decline in Puerto Rican talent was attributable solely to the draft, more scouts suggest the cause is more complicated, and the situation not quite as dire as first supposed.

"Everyone wants to blame the draft," says Tim Wilken, the former Blue Jays scouting director who is now a vice president of baseball operations. "I think the talent is maybe not as good as ever, but it’s pretty steady."

Major League Baseball is making its grandest marketing push into Puerto Rico ever this season by staging 22 Expos games in San Juan. While few disagree Puerto Rican interest in the game has dipped over the past 10-15 years, with the on-field talent it produces suffering accordingly, few offer the same explanations, let alone remedies.

The instruction issue is incontrovertible. Prospects now spend two extra years on the island, in amateur programs that play games only on weekends, rather than receive daily instruction as Organized Baseball professionals. "If you take a 16-year-old and teach him, at 20 he’ll be much more developed than if you get him at 18," Cubs scouting director John Stockstill says. "The earlier you get him, before he physically changes, the better."

When asked if the draft has hurt their countrymen, though, several Puerto Rican major leaguers claim exactly the opposite. Any sacrifice in development, they say, is more than made up for by finishing high school–particularly if the player winds up one of the 90 percent of minor leaguers who never reach the big leagues.

"School is important in your life," says Marlins catcher Ramon Castro, a first-round pick of the Astros in 1994. Across the Florida clubhouse, Ivan Rodriguez adds, "For me it was a good idea. They like to play baseball but at the same time they have to focus on school . . . If you’re a good player, you’re a good player. You’ll make it anyway."

Another unassailable factor is the lack of immediate self-interest teams have in cultivating talent in Puerto Rico. Before players became subject to the draft, teams that invested money in scouting the island and employing entrepreneurial scouts, such as Luis Rosa of the Padres and Rangers, would see a return on their investment in the form of the best players. With the eat-what-you-catch culture gone, no club wants to develop talent for others to snap up; they turn to such places as the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Sandy Alderson, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president of baseball operations, says MLB must spend the dollars to reinvigorate the talent. As a first step, Alderson was in charge of pledging $200,000 from baseball’s central fund to help support the new Puerto Rico Baseball Academy and High School, begun last year by former major leaguer Edwin Correa (see Page 24).

"We invest $40 million a year as an industry in the Dominican Republic. What do we invest in Puerto Rico? We don’t invest anything," Alderson says, referring to individual clubs. "You don’t get the players you develop, just like you don’t get the players you develop if you invest the money in Oakland or St. Louis. You’re investing in the game for the greater good of the community and hopefully the game as well, but there’s no direct benefit.

"If you take it from a player-development budget and put it in the community-relations budget, typically you drop a few zeroes. There’s a reason you get more players out of the Dominican Republic. Yes, they play more baseball. When you put $40 million into the game in that area, you’re going to get a result. What do we put into Puerto Rico? Right now, we put zip into Puerto Rico."

The first of Puerto Rico’s 206 big leaguers arrived in 1942, when righthander Hiram Bithorn debuted with the Cubs. The nation exported Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda in 1954 and ’55, and hit the mother lode in the 1980s with the gaggle of players such as Delgado and Williams who remain stars.

With more than 10 years to reflect on the bonanza, some scouts now wonder if it was just a historical blip. After all, it’s tough to criticize Alabama for not producing Aaron, Mays and McCovey again.

"Who knows if they’re ever going to that level again? I don’t know if you can compare it to that," Wilken says. "Sometimes you just can’t equal the best output ever. It’s ungodly–Ruben Sierra, Carlos Delgado, Juan Gonzalez, Roberto and Sandy Alomar, Ivan Rodriguez . . . you’ve got three or four Hall of Famers and a few others on the cusp. That’s pretty darned hard to accomplish.

"Puerto Rico has about the same population as Miami (4 million). So you’re going to have peaks and valleys. Miami has its ups and downs all the time."

Puerto Ricans have not been prominent in the draft as some expected back in 1989. Just five have been taken in the first round: Castro and Hiram Bocachica (Expos) in 1994, Juan LeBron (Royals) in 1995, and Wilken’s Blue Jays tandem in 1999 and 2000, outfielders Alexis Rios and Miguel Negron. Last year, not one of the top 100 selections was from the island.

Chuck McMichael, a longtime scout and special assistant to Braves general manager John Schuerholz, says in the past 10 years, young Puerto Ricans have found their attention diverted from the game: "Puerto Rico has become Americanized to the max–you have extreme sports, volleyball, the Internet. All the things we have in America, you have in Puerto Rico. Fifteen or 20 years ago, those things were not identifiable."

One option Wilken says Puerto Rican prospects are pursuing more often is moving to the United States, often Florida, to play high school baseball for a year or two to prepare for the draft. This was the avenue shortstop Felipe Lopez took before becoming a first-round pick (by the Blue Jays) in 1998. He moved from Puerto Rico to Altamonte Springs, Fla., where he played for a top program at Lake Brantley High. Two of last year’s most promising American League pitchers, Seattle’s Joel Piniero and Minnesota’s J.C. Romero, took similar paths to the pros, so people often forget they are Puerto Ricans.

Then again, any instinct to leave Puerto Rico to pursue baseball can’t be an endorsement of the programs in their home country. This is what Correa’s academy aims to fix–building a school specifically for ballplayers, rather than fighting the reluctance of Puerto Rican high schools to support baseball programs.

"They just do physical education," Correa says. "In private school, they’ve started a movement to have a little more sports, but you’re talking about an hour, that’s it. That’s why this academy breaks all the conventions that have been established in Puerto Rico for many years. These kids are spending from 7:30 to 11:30 on their sport programs, every single day."

Alderson’s support for Correa’s facility is based upon this merging of education and baseball. To get better players out of the draft, he says, MLB must foster a healthier, more self-sustaining base below.

"Draft or no draft, Major League Baseball has to get involved," Alderson says. "I still firmly believe that if you’re going to sign players out of these places, you have to give back. You can’t just cherry pick what’s been developed."

[Rajah]

I don't have much to say about the actual question, but I like the idea of the baseball school, provided these kids are still getting a good education.

[gyb13]

Originally posted by Wolf Hopper
Over the past five years, major league teams have signed an average of 28 Puerto Ricans a year, down 24 percent from the previous five, when there were two fewer teams.

so they're signing 28 players a year instead of 37. Sure, it's a difference, but it's not like the well has run dry.

[Wolf Hopper]

Originally posted by gyb13
so they're signing 28 players a year instead of 37. Sure, it's a difference, but it's not like the well has run dry.

Still, it's a drop:

Over the past five years, major league teams have signed an average of 28 Puerto Ricans a year, down 24 percent from the previous five, when there were two fewer teams. Not one of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects was signed off the island, and just two of the 119 players in Top 10 Prospects lists who were drafted out of high school came from Puerto Rico.

[gyb13]

Originally posted by Wolf Hopper
Not one of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects was signed off the island, and just two of the 119 players in Top 10 Prospects lists who were drafted out of high school came from Puerto Rico.

couldn't this be partially explained by a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?

now that there is a flag regarding PR players ("they didn't have instruction for two years in h.s."), teams are likely to be biased against the players, even if their quality hasn't gone down.

[SmedIndy]

No matter about the "pipleine" - the drafting of PR players has helped clean up that process somehow and I think it needs to be done with all amateurs.

[gyb13]

baseball's loss but the kids' gain. they're better off concentrating on their studies...