OT: Bias towards Haitian Prospects

[youngLion]

I thought this piece from MLBTR was fascinating.

This season, as during every season in recent memory, more Major League players come from the Caribbean island of Hispaniola than from any place outside of the United States. But for the time being, they come only from the eastern half of the island, the Dominican Republic. Prospects with origins in Haiti, Hispaniola’s western half, do exist, however.

...

But as Neftali Ruiz at the Dominican newspaper El Caribe (link in Spanish) wrote in a highly recommended article this weekend, teams and scouts are showing decreasing willingness to sign or work with such prospects, due to what is perceived as a categorical opposition toward Haitian players from within the league itself.

...

“The cases involving Haitians always get stalled in MLB. They usually get categorized as ‘indefinite’ and it takes three or four years for the player to receive a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ verdict,” Guerrero told Ruiz. “I don’t see them any more because I don’t want to waste so much time.”

...

"Just as Major League teams take the risk of recruiting Cuban players, having no idea of their age and true identity, they should give the same treatment to Haitians. The team’s directors will argue that these young men are high-risk goods, and most times this may be true, but if that's the case, then the matter could be resolved by offering a lower bonus, instead of rejecting them as a commodity without any value."

As for the tortuous verification process facing Haitian players, Guerrero said reading about them made him “feel like I was living in the time before 1947.”

“The pieces Ruiz published reveal that, although more than 60 years have passed since Jackie Robinson vindicated the rights of black players to play baseball in the Major Leagues, in many respects the exclusion of people based on their ethnicity is still in force in the sport.”

[Homer Jay]

Interesting, I wonder where the objections come from. If MLB is sponsoring these people in and when they arrive they disappear and go underground, it may affect the league's ability to get the government to allow them to bring in more people from other countries.