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Protest causes MLB to cancel Dominican national showcase
Major League Baseball has canceled its Dominican national prospect showcase due to lack of attendance, but not from crowds or teams — from Dominican players and trainers, Baseball America reported.
Why weren’t they going to show up? The answer is simple: protest. Dominican players and trainers weren’t attending the showcase to protest MLB’s drive to establish an international draft, which would diminish what little power they have to negotiate with teams. This draft could be established during the next collective-bargaining agreement, which will be negotiated during this offseason. The showcase was to take place on Wednesday and Thursday and would have given amateur Dominican prospects the opportunity to show their talent to teams.
After MLB alerted teams that the showcase had been canceled due to “lack of cooperation from the independent trainers,” a group of independent Latin American trainers made their intentions clear in a statement:
“We do not consider this a victory. We are not against MLB in any way, shape or form. We appreciate everything MLB has done. This is not a fight against MLB, this is a fight against the draft.”
On its face, an international draft doesn’t sound like a bad idea. It would organize international players, raise the signing age, and set firmer rules. But Ben Badler, who originally reported on this news for Baseball America, reveals that it’s not really about the players at all.
Major League Baseball has long wanted an international draft. The driving force behind implementing an international draft is for owners to control their labor costs by paying less money to international amateur players, allowing owners to keep more of that money.
People forget that the commissioner of baseball is chosen by the owners, and it’s their interests that he’s supposed to watch out for. This whole thing is really just a way to help multi-millionaire owners hold on to a little more money. And in exchange, international players would be taken off the open market, given more restrictions about when and at what age they can sign, and their signing prices would be limited.
If the players don’t want an international draft, the MLB Players Association will have to fight for it when negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement begin in the offseason. But Badler says that it’s not high on the association’s to-do list.
On the other side of the table in the CBA negotiations, the players’ association doesn’t care about international amateur players as anything more than a bargaining chip. It’s nothing discriminatory against foreign players, it’s just that the union looks out for players on 40-man rosters.
It’s incredibly unfortunate that they’re just a “bargaining chip,” since in an ideal world the association would be looking out for all players in all stages of baseball.
Meanwhile, unsigned international players will have to exercise what little power they have to make their feelings known, and to make a statement. That’s what the Dominican players and trainers did, and it did cause MLB officials to act. According to Badler, they were so unhappy that players were skipping the showcase that they attempted to get “lesser prospects” to replace them so the event could continue. But that didn’t work and they had to cancel it.
The Venezuelan national showcase is scheduled for mid-November. We’ll see then if the protests will continue.
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
