2 Dominican players compete in 2012 MLB Home Run Derby

The 2012 MLB All-Star Game rosters feature 8 Dominican baseball players this year. That comes out to 11% of all the players appearing in the All-Star Game. The percentage of Dominican players appearing in the 2012 MLB Home Run Derby last night was smaller, but the country still had two representatives swing away in the Derby.

Dominican player Robinson Cano was shut out in the first round of the Home Run Derby. The Dominican Baseball Guy can not remember any player getting shut out in a Derby, so it must be a long time since that has happened. This proves once again that the Home Run Derby does not mean a lot. Cano is one of the top  5 players in the game by most accounts, and he will be in the running for the AL MVP again this year.

However, Jose Bautista salvaged the competition for fans of Dominican players. Bautista has led the AL in home runs the last two seasons and is a appearing in his second strait home run derby, so he was expected to have a good showing. He made it to the second round, then snuck into the finals in a bat off against Mark Trumbo, before finally losing in the finals to Prince Fielder.

Dominican baseball player Robinson Cano is from San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic and Jose Bautista is from Santo Domingo.

All-Star game voting: Baseball fans in the Dominican Republic have chance to vote this year

Every year the Major League All-Star game and festivities seem to grow. There is the Futures Game, a celebrity softball game, and of course the Home Run Derby. And the voting has expanded greatly, especially since internet voting opened a few years back.

Nowadays fans can vote at the stadiums, at a number of voting stations, and online throughout the world. So, Dominicans in the Dominican Republic have had the opportunity to vote online since that voting method was put into place. But this year they will be able to vote at Banco BHD banks throughout the country.

Banco BHD will sponsor All-Star Balloting in the Dominican Republic.  Spanish-language ballots will be available to fans in the Dominican Republic via LasMayores.com, the official Spanish-language web site of MLB, and at All-Star Balloting terminals across more than 80 branches, beginning in May.

Being that internet access is not very widespread in the Dominican Republic, this is good news for Dominican baseball fans. On the other hand, any Dominican fan that wanted to vote would have probably made their way to an internet connection and figured out how to vote. Add in the fact that the Dominican Republic has a population of only ten million, and this initiative will probably have little effect on the final All-Star rosters. 

At least it gives Dominicans that choose to vote more access to their beloved game. And enough Americans vote on Dominican baseball players that if they are the best player at their position they usually get in, nationalistic tendencies be damned.

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.