It’s a favorite trope among naysayers of the worldwide draft that the Rule 4 draft killed Puerto Rican baseball, just as, the argument follows, a worldwide draft would kill baseball in the rest of Latin America.
No doubt this was an easier story to sell in 2007-08, when the Puerto Rican winter league was on a one-year hiatus, but there’s no question that Puerto Rico has been left in the dust by Caribbean rivals Venezuela and the Dominican Republic since around the time that Puerto Ricans became subject to the Rule 4 draft in 1990.
The above graphs the MLB debuts by players from each of the three countries over the last 30 years, and shows pretty clearly that Puerto Ricans have been left out of the rise of the Latin American influence in pro baseball over the last twenty years.
I think the argument goes that when Puerto Rico became subject to the amateur draft, MLB clubs lost their incentive to develop Puerto Rican amateurs, because they could no longer guarantee they’d control said amateurs pro careers; and, that Puerto Rican amateurs were more or less forced to accept slotted bonuses and so lost some incentive to compete for the higher bonuses they might have earned on the open market. (If it sounds fuzzy to you, it sounds fuzzy to me. I’d be thrilled if someone wanted to better present the argument—particularly if they subscribe to it.)
At any rate, there’s a piece of information that usually gets lost here. To wit, the Dominican Summer League was inaugurated in 1987, with four teams drawn from the property of a larger collection of MLB clubs; it affiliated with MLB in 1991, and currently boasts 37 teams and some 1,200 players. Several MLB clubs have multiple entrants in the DSL, and there’s every reason to believe that the DSL will continue to grow. Meanwhile, since the DSL affiliated in 1991, it has been open to prospects from throughout Latin America—except those hailing from Puerto Rico.
In other words, beginning in 1991, there have been increasingly more baseball playing jobs for Dominicans and Venezuelans than there have been for Puerto Ricans. Moreover, as the DSL came to employ more ballplayers, it also created incentive for the men who—for a percentage of any eventual signing bonuses—train and advise amateur ballplayers until they sign. (And more still, these men have helped increase the number and quality of amateur talent, which is a big part of why the DSL continues to grow.)
And so the Dominican, and more recently, the Venezuelan presence in the big leagues has exploded, while Puerto Ricans are represented at about the same level as they were 30 years ago.
All of this to say that while the Rule 4 draft has affected Puerto Rican baseball, it is primarily by aligning it with the North American developmental system as opposed to the Latin American system. Meanwhile, assuming that the DSL would continue to exist in its present form, there’s no reason to think that a worldwide draft would have the same effect on Latin American baseball. The clubs have invested in Latin American academies, and the return on the investment has been good. They have built the capacity and there’s no reason to think that they won’t continue to fill it.
Which is not to say that a worldwide draft is necessarily a good idea. I’ll be back with some better arguments against it later in the week.
