Joe Kehoskie
American baseball agent and consultant.
Page 1 of 1
It's the wild, wild West of baseball, and it just keeps getting wilder.
There's at least half a billion dollars [worth] of baseball players in Cuba right now and probably a lot more.
In many if not most cases, Cuban players haven’t been busts so much as they’ve been systematically over-hyped during the signing process, which led to unrealistic expectations around Major League Baseball and in the media. The vast majority of Cuba’s truly elite players have either stayed in Cuba for their entire careers or left Cuba too late to have a meaningful MLB career.
You take 5 percent of Contreras's $30 million, you're retired.
Fidel Castro essentially forced these guys to leave Cuba. It wasn't really even a choice. It was either stay at home, be handed a broom and told 'have a nice life' or they could leave Cuba and continue playing baseball.
Unfortunately, here in the Dominican, a lot of the time kids just quit school at 10, 11, 12 and play baseball full-time. It’s great for the kids who make it because they become superstars and [make] millions of dollars in the big leagues. But for 98 kids out of a hundred, it results in a kid who is 18, 19 with no education. So it’s kind of a win-lose here in the Dominican.
Page 1 of 1