Penalties For Boston Red Sox, Shame For Baseball

Yesterday it was reported by Baseball America’s Ben Badler that MLB league offices are expected to announce disciplinary action against the Boston Red Sox organization.

The anticipated penalties are the response to an investigation of Boston’s alleged improper utilization of “package deals” for multiple international amateur signings within the 2015 signing period. Specifically, it was alleged that such deals aided the Red Sox in overcoming their individual signing cap of 300,000; a cap imposed following their overage spending during the 2014 signing period. It was widely speculated that a pair of top 25 players from Venezuela—Albert Guaimaro and Simon Muzziotti—in truth received more than the official 300,000 each respectively signed for.

Insider sources have leaked that the penalties are likely to include Boston’s forfeiture of the rights to Guaimaro, Muzziotti, and other 2015 Red Sox signings found to have been signed via the prohibited practices previously described. All such players would be granted their unconditional free agency. Further restrictions for the upcoming international signing period, set to begin tomorrow, are also expected, although the specifics of such are still a matter of speculation. The announcement will come as a major blow the Red Sox, who were expected to sign the #31 international prospect, 16 year old outfielder Roimer Bolivar, along with a bevy of other highly regarded prospects at the onset of this upcoming signing period.

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The findings of an MLB investigation levied against the Red Sox reveal a Latin American baseball industry still yearning for reform. Long standing abusive practices within the fundamentally compromised international talent development industry remain deeply entrenched, despite the outward perception that they were adequately addressed by the new provisions found within the 2011 CBA. Previously a wide open market, the new CBA essentially instilled a cap and trade voucher system for international players. Whereas before teams were allowed to allocate whatever funds they desired towards whatever age-appropriate amateur players they were targeting, the new system put a collective annual cap on MLB’s international expenditures, and then rationed that money inversely based upon the prior season’s standings. Bonus pool money was also made a tradable commodity, while a combination of tax penalties and future restrictions were put in place to discourage over-spending. Depending on the degree of overspending in a given year a team would be hit with both a tax, in addition to a lowered individual player bonus cap for the next signing period.

The publicly stated rationale for this new system was largely disingenuous. While it was sold as both a parody-enhancing tactic, as well as a way to discourage shoddy Latin American agents and trainers from exploiting and abusing young kids, the truth was more insidious. In reality, this was an anti-capitalistic measure designed to maximize the profits and enhance risk aversion for those at the top of baseball’s economic food chain. Baseball’s billionaire owner class was merely self-imposing limits on the amount they’d allow themselves to spend on cheap, low risk, high reward commodities, otherwise known as the deeply impoverished, adolescent human beings from desperate, exotic locations.

The quality of the academies and training centers operated by Latin American nationals has not improved. Many of them still operate with a near or complete void of academic schooling, while on the field players continue to be overworked in sub-standard conditions. The trainers and agents are today no less prone to pumping their clientele full of PED’s, and they are just as likely as ever to provide fraudulent documents that falsely present their players as younger than is the truth.

This is because no tangible regulations were ever imposed on the people and places executing these abusive practices. Furthermore, nothing was ever done to remove the incentive for the trainers and agents to engage in such practices. The economic vultures were still able to cash in from their high end clients, precisely because of the sort of illegal under the table dealings alleged to have occurred in this Red Sox situation; a situation that is unlikely to be an anecdotal aberration within a more broadly clean system. A team would simply go to the Latin American trainer of an elite prospect and agree to “officially” sign said player for whatever the legal maximum amount was. Simultaneously they’d agree to take on a number of other lesser prospects, with the understanding being that much of that money was really destined for the star they sought to sign. The trainer/agent would thus end up receiving his full take of a major signing bonus, despite such a signing bonus technically never existing. Thus, the incentive to continue raising prospects in a school-free, steroid rich, plagiarized document ample environment never subsided. All that changed was that lesser players were now being unwillfully used as pawns.

The most disturbing aspect of all this is that it could be avoided in a most simple manner. If baseball’s billionaire class would simply “legalize” unlimited singing bonuses for international players, all would be fixed. If they also agreed to actually invest in quality baseball academies throughout Latin America, rather than heavily relying upon unregulated, opportunistic natives to run such academies (whom of course are not funded by the billionaire’s own dollars) then all the abusive and fraudulent practices would subside. If their only goal was to achieve better parody they could simply agree to more comprehensive revenue sharing, and other billionaire-to-billionaire redistributive practices.

Unfortunately, Major League Baseball views Latin America as nothing more than a fertile breeding ground for cheap labor. They understand the desperate life circumstances of most of the young boys who come to baseball academies. It should be noted that as of the time of this writing, Venezuela, the home of the players investigated in conjunction with the Red Sox alleged activities, is on the verge of a sociopolitical upheaval. Corruption and mismanagement from the socialist dictatorship within the Western hemisphere’s most oil rich nation has led to massive shortages of basic goods, and a humanitarian crisis pertaining to the lack of access to food has much of the countryside teetering on the edge of a violent backlash. In other portions of baseball’s Fertile Crescent dictatorships, war, drug cartels, human trafficking, scarcity, and other deplorable realities are widely pervasive.

Yet, baseball continues to see the people directly impacted by these circumstances as nothing more than inanimate resources. It is the ruthless mining for the most easily exploitable resources outsourcing can conjure up. The emotionally detached approach lends itself to an ugly dehumanization of those on the receiving end. This attitude was reflected by the way in which the commoditized children of the global south were treated by MLB officials during the course of their investigation. It is being reported that allegations of come up which have suggested MLB officials aggressively interrogated lesser players thought to have been used within the Boston Red Sox scheme.

It is being reported that they were interrogated without their parents present, without a translator, and told that they would be suspended, or banned from baseball if they did not cooperate. It was also reported that MLB told them they would access the player’s bank accounts to find out who was lying about where bonus money truly went. All of this is shockingly reminiscent of the way in which Latin American people are treated while at immigration detention centers. It even bears some resemblance to the sort of misguided police tactics used against vulnerable individuals, often leading to occasionally highly publicized faulty confessions (think Serial, How to Get Away With Murder, etc).

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Adding a final touch of irony to the whole debacle is that news of these impending penalties comes amidst the backdrop of yesterday’s widespread backlash against H.R. 5580, which sought to grant minor league baseball immunity from minimum wage and overtime pay laws. At least we know the powers that be are consistent. Whether we are talking about desperate Latin American boys, or hustling minor league dreamers, we can know with great certainty that baseball’s owners wish to pass the tab onto someone else. The consequences of such are irrelevant…until they become public, at which point aggressive and inappropriate scapegoating will commence. As evidenced by the whole Red Sox situation, it appears that time is now.

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