Top International Players, U-15 Tournament And A Broken Signing System | Notes From The Dominican Republic
Image credit: (Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
My favorite place in the world to go for baseball is the Dominican Republic.
There are great players all over the world. Seeing amateur prospects in the United States is easier, more comfortable and organized, whether it’s college players or high school players on the travel circuit. But the Dominican Republic is where all the best athletes grow up playing baseball, where you can see players from sunrise to sunset, and the extra degree of difficulty involved is something I’ve long admired about international scouts and appreciate even more with time, especially those who have spent decades signing players in Latin America.
Over the last five years, it has grown more challenging to schedule a trip to the Dominican Republic around an event where I’m able to see several of the top players for the next signing class in one place, especially in a competitive environment, because of all the early signing agreements. With the high school players in the United States for the draft, it’s easy, with tournaments and showcases throughout the summer and fall where everyone can see the top players for the upcoming draft class and for the underclass players.
There aren’t a lot of international events that draw hundreds of scouts into one place, but the U-15 Pan American Championship is an exception. I went to the Dominican Republic for a week last month centered around the tournament, held in Baseball City at the former academies of the Reds and Orioles, Baseball City is an area of Boca Chica that has a private road with five complexes within walking distance, including the academies for the White Sox, Blue Jays and Diamondbacks. With two adjacent fields at each complex, you’re able to watch multiple games in the morning and the afternoon slate of action.
For scouts, one of the big draws of the tournament is Cuba—more on that team later—with the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico also heavy hitters in the tournament. The Bahamas was there as well, and while Puerto Rico won the championship, those players are subject to the draft, so they draw less focus from international scouts. It’s also a good way for scouts to see players from Panama, Nicaragua and Brazil, countries where the area scout might see a player but are less frequent destinations for other scouts in the organization.
Hearing the ping of a metal bat in the Dominican Republic felt out of place, but the tournament is a great environment for the players and for the scouts to evaluate players competing for their country with passion and energy, with horns playing from the dugout, trying to win a championship.
The top international prospects eligible to sign in the upcoming period that opens on Jan. 15, 2025 weren’t there. Those players are just above the age cutoff for this tournament, but several of the top players eligible to sign in 2026 and 2027—many of whom of signing commitments in place with teams—were there.
So I did what I do whenever I’m in the Dominican Republic, supplementing my time at the tournament by going around to different trainer programs. Big events are an efficient way to see a lot of players from different academies in one place, but I love going around to different parts of the country, being at the fields where the players train, seeing the different areas of the country where players are from and getting to meet with players and their families.
After my most recent trip, my notes and videos on standout players, things that caught my attention and bigger picture thoughts from the Dominican Republic.
Dominican Republic Steps Up
The Dominican Republic is one of the premier countries in the world when it comes to major league talent. It’s the biggest source of talent for MLB clubs signing international free agents. Yet that talent level typically has not translated to international tournament success at the youth level. For the U-18 tournaments, that’s to be expected; countries like the United States and Japan can bring their top high school players, while the top players in that age bracket from the Dominican Republic don’t play because they’re already in professional baseball.
Yet even at the younger levels, the Dominican Republic hasn’t typically put together results on par with the caliber of talent in the country. That changed in the U-15 Pan American tournament, where the Dominican Republic went 5-0 in pool play, then lost 5-4 to Puerto Rico in the championship game.
The one time the Dominican lineup struggled was against Panama’s starter, Jose Serva, a lefty who didn’t have an overpowering fastball but had good feel for pitching and was able to land his breaking ball for strikes. Amateur hitters in the Dominican Republic are accustomed to seeing big velocity from a young age but don’t face many pitchability lefties, so their offense was scoreless through five innings until they got into the bullpen and rallied for an 11-10 win in extra innings.
Prospects To Watch From The Tournament
Dominican shortstop Alfredo Sena (Braves, eligible to sign Jan. 15, 2027) should get one of the biggest bonuses in his class and was the star of the tournament, leading the Dominican team in nearly every statistical category, including three home runs, one of which was a walkoff homer in extra innings to beat Panama. The mix of lefthanded hitting ability, consistent quality at-bats and power was extremely impressive.
The inning before Sena hit the walkoff, Dominican shortstop Wandy Asigen (Yankees, 2026) got them to extra innings with arguably the most clutch hit of the tournament. With the Dominican Republic down to its final out trailing 5-2 in the seventh, Asigen pulled a three-run homer to right-center field to tie the game. Asigen has excellent bat speed and raw power, whistling the barrel through the zone aggressively to drive the ball with impact.
Another dangerous hitter in the Dominican lineup, Dominican shortstop Cesar Altagracia (Padres, 2027), took some of the most consistent quality at-bats of any player in the tournament. He’s a physical 6-foot-2 lefthanded hitter who showed good feel for the strike zone, worked deep counts and combined a mature approach with the ability to drive the ball for extra-base damage, including three triples.
Dominican outfielder Miguel Grullon (Rangers, 2027) showed a fluid, low-effort stroke from the left side starting from his swing of the tournament, sending a 1-0 pitch for a home run to right-center field. Grullon should be getting one of the top bonuses in his class with his mix of hitting ability and power potential.
The big name on Venezuela’s team was outfielder Francisco Renteria (Phillies, 2026), who should get one of the top bonuses in his class. Renteria’s swing and hitting ability stood out from a very early stage in the process, but he’s grown to become a physical, power-hitting center fielder who could end up a corner outfielder. Renteria hit .313/.450/.563 with a pair of triples, four walks and two strikeouts at the tournament.
Renteria and Jesus Chavez (Rangers, 2026) both stuck out for their physicality in Venezuela’s lineup. Chavez showed his righthanded power stroke from a compact swing in the biggest moment of the tournament for Venezuela, hitting a walkoff home run in a 7-5 win over Brazil in the fifth-place game, earning his country a spot in the U-15 World Cup in August.
Cuba Draw Scouts, But Struggles On Field
The decline of the Cuban national team and the quality of players in Serie Nacional, the country’s top league, has been obvious over the last decade. Now even at the youth levels, Cuba’s top teams are no longer as stacked as they once were.
The top Cuban players in their age group are leaving the country as teenagers, sometimes at 12 or 13, and going to the Dominican Republic to train and try to sign with a major league team. Any time Cuba brings a U-18 or a U-15 team to an international tournament, that’s going to draw a heavy scouting contingent for evaluators to get what might be their only in-person looks at a player before he leaves Cuba. That was again the case here, but the Cuban team finished in seventh place out of 12 teams with a 2-3 record, including an 11-1 loss to Nicaragua with wins over Peru and Guatemala.
Scouts left the tournament feeling the prospect level on the team was light. That’s not necessarily a sign that the talent of Cuban baseball is down, but that the exodus of the country’s top youth talent has decimated their younger national teams. There’s a formidable team of young Cuban players that could be built with prospects from Cuba who are training in the Dominican Republic and aren’t allowed to play for this team.
Top Players I Saw Around The DR
Padres catcher Ethan Salas is a special talent, already the No. 10 prospect in baseball at 17 after signing on Jan. 15, 2023. Older brother Jose Salas, a 20-year-old infielder who signed with the Marlins in 2019 for $2.8 million, is with the Twins in High-A Cedar Rapids after coming over in the trade that sent Luis Arraez to the Marlins.
Their younger brother, shortstop Andrew Salas (Marlins, 2025), is next in line to get one of the top bonuses in his class on Jan. 15. Salas is a switch-hitter who, like his brothers, was born and raised in Florida, but will sign as an international free agent out of Venezuela, with Salas currently training in the Dominican Republic. He showed a good clock for the game both in the field and at the plate, with smooth, under control actions in the dirt. A switch-hitter, Salas in BP showed a knack for backspinning balls deep to left-center field from the left side of of the plate. In a game, he faced only righties and took all of his at-bats lefthanded, drawing three walks and hitting a double down the left field line.
Dominican shortstop Josuar Gonzalez (Giants, 2025) looked like one of the elite players eligible to sign on Jan. 15. A 5-foot-10 switch-hitter, Gonzalez shows explosive actions in multiple ways. He’s a plus-plus runner with quick-twitch actions in the infield, while his fast hands at the plate help him generate good bat speed to be able to drive the ball with impressive power for his size. For some scouts, he’s the best prospect for 2025 out of the Dominican Republic because of his combination of athleticism, explosive tool set, ability to play a premium position and hit from both sides of the plate.
Angeibel Gomez (Royals, 2026) showed why he’s one of the top players in Venezuela for Jan. 15, 2026. A long, lean righthanded hitter, Gomez has significant physical projection remaining and is already standing out for his offensive performance in games with hard contact. In a game I saw, he hit doubled twice (one pulled off the left field fence, the other down the third base line into the left field corner), singled and drew a walk.
He shined defensively in center field, where he showed strong instincts on three plays, one where he broke well off the bat and showed good range into the left-center field gap, another where he did the same on a catch in the right-center gap and the most impressive a leaping catch running back to the wall on a fly ball hit over his head, a play that would give most outfielders this age all kinds of trouble.
The Signing Process Is Broken, MLB Isn’t Fixing It
Whenever I’m in the Dominican Republic, every agent wants to show me their top players. That’s always been the case. Except now, instead of agents wanting me to see their top player for the next class or the one after that, they want to show their top player for 2028 or 2029. Players who are 13, 12, even 11. Many of their top players for 2025, 2026 and 2027 are already committed.
For the most part, the trainers don’t like where the international signing system has gone. Teams are reaching agreements to sign players when they’re 13 or younger, meaning the trainers have to get the players ready to be showcased and reach an agreement even earlier. These are non-binding agreements with no contractual guarantee of anything once the player is officially eligible to sign his contract four years later.
MLB’s solution to slow down the signing process has been to try to implement an international draft. The only time MLB typically even publicly acknowledges the reality of how international prospects are committing to teams at such an early age is when a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is nearing and the league is trying to make a PR case that the draft is the only solution to the problems in the international signing process.
Trying to get the union to agree to an international draft as Plan A is fine, but when that doesn’t work—and it hasn’t worked going back over several CBA negotiations—Plan B for the commissioner’s office can’t just be to do nothing, wait around for another four years and try to get a draft pushed through in the next agreement. Something needs to be done whether a draft ever happens or not.
I’m not saying everything here is a simple fix. But if they really wanted to, the commissioner’s office could solve a lot of these problems by the summer. Club officials and the scouts who work on the ground in Latin America would largely (though not universally) welcome change to slow things down. Signing players at 16 is hard enough; I don’t know many scouts who want their jobs to be based on trying to predict the future of 13-year-old players or trying to find a player at 12 before other teams identify him. The trainers would generally be in favor of slowing the process down as well.
Yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of the story I wrote that went in depth on the issues of early agreements, of how teams were competing to sign 14-year-old players. It’s so long ago that one of the amateur prospects mentioned in the story who wasn’t eligible to sign for another year—a 15-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr.—is two years away from becoming a major league free agent. All of the concerns from team officials and trainers voiced in the story still hold true today, only now the deals are being struck even earlier.
MLB has had an obvious, public problem for a decade, and it has only enabled the problem to get worse.
