The pipeline from Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente’s homeland to the major leagues is disintegrating. Justin Berl/Getty ImagesJorge CastilloSep 15, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsKELVIN COLÓN WAS bouncing between ballparks in Puerto Rico last Tuesday, scouting teams in the inaugural Buzzer Beater baseball tournament, an unprecedented event featuring 32 high schools from across the island. Never had the baseball-loving nation held a full-fledged tournament featuring public schools, private schools and baseball academies.Some teams were overmatched. The great majority of the players won’t have professional baseball careers.
But Colón, a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was encouraged.”There’s talent here, man,” Colón said. “I just left the ballpark right now, saw two guys that I could easily say are seventh-to-10th-round follows. They might end up in the 12th, 13th round, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not big leaguers.”Insiders from across Puerto Rico’s baseball spectrum — current and former major leaguers, front office executives, agents and scouts — agree with Colón. Real talent exists in Puerto Rico — and Tuesday’s Roberto Clemente Day is a reminder of that.
Major League Baseball’s annual remembrance of the Hall of Fame outfielder, who died in a plane crash in 1972 delivering supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, is a celebration of Clemente’s marvelous career and humanitarian efforts. He’s a hero across baseball-playing nations in Latin America, and nowhere more so than in his native Puerto Rico.Clemente was the island’s first baseball superstar, and his tragic death only added to his lore. He inspired generations of Puerto Ricans to pick up the sport and follow his path to the major leagues. But more than a half century after his death, nearly two dozen people interviewed for this story said that in recent years the pipeline from Puerto Rico to the majors has disintegrated.The reasons they gave are wide-ranging, but every source pointed to one genesis for the decline: MLB’s decision to include Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, in the Rule 4 draft in 1989.
The move took Puerto Ricans out of the international market, where they could sign as free agents at 16 years old, and into a player pool with high school seniors from the United States.”We are neither one thing nor the other,” an agent based in Puerto Rico said. “We’re not a state, we’re not independent. In the draft we’re Americans, but in the Futures Game we’re part of the world. They decide where to put us.”Being part of the draft, I can tell you, is definitely what has hurt us the most.”THE DECLINE OF Puerto Rican-born major leaguers was evident this July in Philadelphia.
For the first time since 1988, no Puerto Rican-born players were on either All-Star team. In the days leading up to the Midsummer Classic, just five players born in Puerto Rico were selected in the 2026 MLB draft, none of them before the 13th round. No Puerto Rican-born player has been taken in the first round since Heliot Ramos in 2017.So far this season, 27 players born in Puerto Rico have appeared in games. In 2001, that number was 54 — exactly twice as many.
New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, who missed more than two months with a left calf strain, leads Puerto Rican-born players with 1.9 bWAR this season. That would’ve ranked 13th among Puerto Rican-born players in 2001. There are also no Puerto Rican-born players on Kiley McDaniel’s top 100 prospects list.The lack of depth became apparent during the World Baseball Classic in March, when several of Puerto Rico’s best active MLB players, including veterans Lindor, Carlos Correa, Jose Berrios and Javier Baez, were unable to participate, largely due to injuries. Puerto Rico’s tournament ended with a quarterfinal loss to Italy.”It’s poor right now,” a longtime MLB front office executive said.
“You can see that from the beginning with the World Baseball Classic this year.”The issues transcend baseball. A poverty rate more than double that of Mississippi — the poorest state in the U.S. — leaves families unable to keep up with the showcase culture that has engulfed youth baseball in the United States. There is a lack of accessible facilities to properly train players. There are fewer competitive games for top-end talent.
Other sports and entertainment options drain talent from the potential player pool.”We are in a truly horrible place,” the Puerto Rican agent said. “Like never before.””It’s f—ed,” a current major leaguer said.Carlos Delgado, who hit 473 home runs — the most ever by a Puerto Rican — across 17 MLB seasons, began his professional career after signing with the Toronto Blue Jays for $90,000 in October 1988. He was the penultimate Puerto Rican to sign as an international free agent before the draft was implemented on the island.”We’re victims of the draft,” Delgado said in Spanish. “The draft has always hurt us.”Delgado was part of Puerto Rico’s 1990s golden era, a storied group that included Hall of Famers Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martínez and Ivan Rodríguez, plus a slew of All-Stars, including Sandy Alomar Jr., Juan González, Bernie Williams, Carlos Baerga, Benito Santiago and Ruben Sierra.
All were signed as international free agents before Puerto Rico was included in the draft.MLB’s decision to incorporate Puerto Rico in the draft, according to multiple people interviewed, had unforeseen negative consequences on the flow of talent to the majors. Previously, most big league franchises employed full-time scouts on the island who would invest in the development of prospects, knowing that a strong relationship — and the right amount of money — could convince players to sign with their organizations. With the draft, however, teams lost that control; any one of the other 29 teams could simply pick a desired player in the draft before them.”I think the draft had a deleterious effect on Puerto Rico in terms of the developmental players,” said Lou Melendez, a former MLB executive for 33 years with extensive experience in Puerto Rico. “Because clubs, in my estimation, were disincentivized from investing the way they were many years ago.”While clubs have backed off investing in Puerto Rico over the past 37 years, MLB has tried to compensate with funding and programs.The league helped establish the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy and High School and has donated millions of dollars to it since its inception in 2001.
In 2017, MLB donated $1 million to Puerto Rico for Hurricane Maria relief. In 2022, the league and the MLBPA donated $2 million for the building of a stadium for The Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy.The league has also established Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) programs on the island, currently runs a development program in four regions from September through May with more than 200 players, and holds a showcase every winter for the top 100 draft-eligible players, according to an MLB spokesperson.”Puerto Rico has a long history of producing extraordinary Major League players who have made great contributions to the game both on and off the field,” MLB wrote in a statement to ESPN. “We continue to invest in several programs aimed towards developing the next generation of Puerto Rican players in the big leagues.”MLB has played 49 regular-season games in Puerto Rico since 2001 and has had Puerto Rico host games in four of the six WBC tournaments, including this year’s edition.”The clubs don’t invest, but the commissioner’s office has,” said Melendez, who served as Puerto Rico’s general manager for the first three iterations of the WBC. “And it just hasn’t been enough.
It just hasn’t been enough.”OVER THE YEARS, the Dominican Repu
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