Breaking down Cuba Baseball and the Latest Agreement with MLB

In what could be a landmark agreement between Cuba baseball and MLB, a report on Tuesday claims that Cuban players might be able to sign with MLB teams as soon as 2019.

According to a report published by CiberCuba on Tuesday, an official close to a Major League organization asserts that the Cuban government and MLB have agreed to allow Cuba baseball players to be able to sign major league contracts starting in 2019.

Francys Romero was the first to report the story, but then, on Wednesday, Jeff Passan confirmed Romero’s story, and added that a historic deal between MLB and Cuba has been finalized.

I spoke to Mr. Romero further about this agreement, and this is what he had to say.

When asked who benefits most from this deal, Romero said MLB. He’s right, MLB has been under scrutiny after it was revealed that the DOJ was investing MLB’s international signing practices and after Eddie Dominguez’s book, Baseball Cop, revealed troubling details of player trafficking. For baseball, this agreement makes perfect sense.

The deal could also, as Romero articulates in his piece, put an end to “the mass exodus of baseball players that began systematically in 1991 and has reached its extreme limits in the last five years”.

However, for Cuba this agreement comes with very few benefits. Players will still likely seek to leave Cuba, whose talent pool is already very limited, in order to play for the big leagues. The only difference is that Cuba will gain some financial benefit.

Previously, players would just leave Cuba to play in MLB and sign million dollar deals. Mr. Romero cites that sine 2008, Cuban born players have earned upwards of $700M in MLB contracts. With this agreement in place, Cuba will now be able to tap into some of that money.

Also, while Cuban players will continue to seek to play in the US, they will also be allowed to return to play for Olympic teams or for the Cuban WBC team every four years. That would be a spectacle we’ve never had the pleasure of seeing. Guys like Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu would be allowed to wear the Cuban uniform when competing against other countries.

Mr. Romero put it perfectly when we spoke earlier today. He said that by sometime in mid-2019, we will know whether this was real, or if it was all a dream. We don’t have to wait any longer.

It is officially a reality.