RealGM

It's not everyday that a major league team ships two of its top pitching prospects 10 time zones away to see if they can be sold to another team. In Japan. But that's exactly the situation the Texas Rangers find themselves in with righthanders Omar Beltre and Alexi Ogando. It's not that the Rangers don't believe the two Dominican prospects don't have the talent or the mental makeup to make it in the United States; it's that they aren't even allowed in the US.

Ogando and Beltre, like an estimated 28 other major league prospects, are permanently barred from stepping on U.S. soil because of their role in a 2004 immigration scam in which players agreed to list women whom oftentimes they'd never met as their wives on the players' immigrant visa applications in exchange for $3,000 to $5,000. Beltre, 26, and Ogando, 24, began tryouts in Tokyo this week to give Japanese teams a look and the pitchers a chance to prove that they are Major League ready even if they're not U.S.-bound.