THERE was little sleep in the days leading up to January 15.

Dozens of teenage baseball players across the Dominican Republic lay in bed, unable to close their eyes. They had batted, pitched and run until sore, sacrificing time away from family since they were children with hopes of returning with a life-changing pay day. Hopes of becoming the next David Ortiz or Pedro Martinez — big league stars with inconceivable financial security.

Suddenly, for some, that future they fought for was at risk, all because of one promising pitcher half a world away.

Pursued this offseason by presumably every major league team, Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki announced on January 17 that he intended to join the Los Angeles Dodgers, two days after MLB’s signing season for top international prospects opened — the same period in which hundreds of Dominican players hoped to finalise handshake deals with MLB teams and finally cash the cheques they’d sought for years. The 23-year-old Sasaki signed a minor league contract with a $6.5 million bonus -– money that otherwise might have gone to those Dominican players.

Instead, the Caribbean country’s baseball industry was once again forced to reckon with a system many say is broken as it struggles to find a solution.

“It’s the dream of a young boy to play in the major leagues,” said Junior Noboa, the Dominican Republic’s baseball commissioner. “It also gives him the opportunity to not only change his life, but his family’s life completely.”

‘The demands are too much’

On a recent January afternoon, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred strode into the Dominican Republic’s sprawling National Palace to meet with President Luis Abinader behind closed doors.

Upon emerging, Manfred told reporters that an international draft was the best solution to end early verbal deals with the families of young Dominican players.

“I draft you, you sign, you know you have an agreement,” he said.

Such a system is years away, at best. What remains, despite years of corruption and criticism, is a form of free agency in which scouts fan out across the Caribbean country in search of talented players as young as 10 years old who then live and train at academies in hopes of reaching a handshake deal on a multimillion-dollar contract with an MLB franchise before they’re 16. This year’s signing period was for players born between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008.

The Dominican poverty rate is over 20 per cent, and some families live on less than $2 per day. One big league signing bonus — for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars — can transform the life of a player, his family and others around him. It’s an enormous amount of pressure, and it falls squarely on kids who would be middle schoolers in the US.

The concerns are many. Fear that loan sharks might target huge shares of players’ future earnings. Verbal commitments with teams that fall apart. And most recently, mounting examples of players being pressured to falsify their age by as many as seven or eight years to increase their value.

That includes news last November of a prominent player under the assumed name Cesar Altagracia who was punished by MLB for pretending to be 14 to land a deal with the San Diego Padres. He was actually 19.

“I believe that the demands are too much, and that’s why we’re seeing some cases of falsifying ages,” Noboa said, noting that baseball scouts insist on seeing young teens play like adults.

Every year in the Dominican Republic, there’s at least 40,000 players who are 16 and able to sign under MLB rules, but only some 550 to 600 are given deals, said Eddy Lorenzo, a local scout.

The push to get noticed weighs heavily in a country with limited options, where an estimated 95 per cent of players training at academies are impoverished and a majority quit school to pursue their big-league dreams.

“The earlier you develop a kid, the earlier he can enter the market. And the earlier he gets into the market, the more money you can get,” Lorenzo said. “This is a Third World country and a business. Everyone tries to get the most money for a player. It’s the reality.”

‘They don’t even look at you'

Phones across the Dominican Republic recently pinged with a message detailing the names of local players that MLB suspected of lying about their age.

Trainers took note, but not all those seeking a multimillion-dollar contract get caught that early in the game.

Carlos Alvarez, formerly known as Esmailyn “Smiley” Gonzalez, played for three years with the Washington Nationals before he was caught. At 15 years old, he assumed his cousin’s name and took four years off his real age after pressure from his coach and despite initial resistance from him and opposition from his mother and uncle.

“I really tried to make a go at it with my real age, but there was no chance,” Alvarez said. “Because when you say you’re 17, they don’t even look at you.”

He signed with the Washington Nationals in 2006 for $1.4 million and tried to focus on the sport he loved despite persistent fear would lose everything.

The day the team introduced its new players, Alvarez’s heart dropped when he looked up and saw his face plastered on the big screen. He assumed the Nationals were just minutes away from finding out he lied. Alvarez was headed to his physical, and since he had never had one, he thought it involved X-rays that would somehow reveal his real age.

Now a trainer based in the western city of Bani, where the wind rustles mango and palm trees, Alvarez says the pressure on young players can be unbearable.

“They feel like they’re the only ones who can help their family,” Alvarez said.

‘Willing to do anything’

Juan Emilio Pimentel, who played as a catcher for the Dodgers in the Dominican complex league, recalled growing up with two pairs of shoes: one to play ball and the other for the weekends.

Around 15 years old, at the urging of his coach, he assumed the name of his neighbour and close friend: Amaury Arias. He was so committed, he even memorised the name of his friend’s great-grandmother.

“People who are poor are willing to do anything,” he said.

Pimentel played with the Dodgers’ Dominican minor league team for three years then left for reasons that when asked about, he demurred, saying, “They never found out about me.”

No easy solutions in sight

Noboa said he is working with the government to cut down on persistent age fraud. They have started registering academies to keep track of them, but they only have 300 out of thousands that operate across the country, with hundreds more added each year by players who didn’t sign and became coaches.

Noboa also has contacted government agencies to keep an eye on official documents being issued or altered, since he believes public employees are illegally profiting from the fraud.

“They’re not doing it for free, you know,” Noboa said.

But other changes are out of his hands, and out of the hands of trainers, players, scouts and the Dominican Republic in general.

Most notably, an international draft. Noboa believes a draft could fix many of the system’s problems by eliminating incentives for MLB teams to strike handshake deals with players as young as possible.

For starters, support in the DR isn’t uniform. Some coaches still see value for players in a market where they are technically free agents, although their ability to cash in has dropped sharply. Until 2017, there was no cap on how much a team could spend on a Latin American player. Then MLB negotiated a cap as part of its collective bargaining agreement with major league players, and total spending dropped 25 per cent the next year, to $153 million.

Management tried to get a draft agreement for the second time in 2022 and proposed a minimum spend of $191m for 2024 but the union rejected an international draft — acceptance would have led to the end of draft pick compensation for qualified free agents. Spending on international amateurs in 2024 totaled $181m.

The current labour contract expires in December 2026, making change unlikely until 2028 at the earliest. If and when conversations on the international draft resume, it’ll be MLB and active major league players at the table — not Noboa, Dominican coaches or the teenagers fighting for those life-changing deals.

“They say, ’Don’t change what works’,” Lorenzo said. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy from everyone, from the teams to the trainers…They say they’re against this. They’re the first ones to pick up a 10-year-old kid and start training him.”