New MLB labor agreement has little affect on Dominican baseball players, nueva acuerdo de MLB no tiene efectos sobre los beisbolistas Dominicanas

The Dominican Baseball Guy supposes the big news today in baseball is that the MLB players and owners agreed to a new labor agreement.  There will be testing for HGH, another wild card team in each league, the luxury tax threshold was adjusted, some changes to the pay scale for draft picks, yada yada yada.

Let's get to the important stuff: how does this effect the Dominican baseball players, aka peloteros Dominicanos?

If you get to the very end of article the Dominican Baseball Guy links to here, you will see one sentence about the effects on international free agents:

For international amateur signings from nations such as the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, a luxury tax will begin with the July 2012-June 2013 signing season on amounts over $2.9 million.

So, basically the new labor agreement addresses almost nothing having to do with international free agents.  It will remain a free for all for many years to come.  You think the Yankees or Red Sox or Cubs care about a luxury tax?

The dream of many to have an international free agent draft and/or include the international free agents with the stateside amateur free agents in a draft is well on the horizon.  The Dominican Baseball Guy did not think there would be a draft for international guys anytime soon, but this is ridiculous.  Why not let Dominican players declare for the draft, and then have a yearly draft of Dominicans that decide to enter it?  Seems easy to the Dominican Baseball Guy.

Status quo remains: whoever agrees to pay the international free agent the most during the summer of their 17th birthday gets the player.  Really did a great job in moving this forward MLB.  Of all the work they were doing, the Dominican Baseball Guy thought they may move to some sort of draft, but apparently not yet.

UPDATE: after some more research and some input from readers, it appears the new deal is even worse than the Dominican Baseball Guy thought.  Beginning in 2012, MLB teams can only spend $2.9M on international free agents.  If they go too far over this number, they will not be allowed to sign international free agents the next year.  So, it is no longer a matter of just paying the luxury tax, it will mean teams spending too much over that threshold will be shut out of international signings.  The agreement is similar for the US amateur draft.  Bad news for draft eligible amateurs.