The Detroit Tigers reportedly reached an unofficial pre-agreement with 12-year-old Domincan prospect Kevin Sosa, paying the junior high school kid a $4M signing bonus. International baseball reporter Wilber Sanchez broke the story. They say he is already able to hit 91-93 pitching with ease.
This informal agreement makes Sosa the youngest player in international baseball history linked to a financial deal of this proportion. It’s a way of circumventing a recent ruling that prohibits players from officially signing baseball deals until they turn 16 under MLB rules.
“The Detroit Tigers have reached a pre-agreement with 12-year-old Kevin Sosa for a $4.0 million signing bonus, making him the youngest player in international baseball history to secure a deal of that magnitude.“ – @wilberdata
The reactions were swift. Longtime radio voice Brandon Tierney captioned a video of Sosa hitting with disbelief.
“12?!!? What??”
Baseball fans and fathers across America chimed in with opinions.
“Meanwhile they want to eliminate US High Schoolers from the draft! Makes zero sense BT,” one user commented.
“That’s crazy. But he also doesn’t look 12,” said another suspicious fan.
Is Kevin Sosa Really 12? Cesar Altagracia & David Severino
International players have been caught shaving years off their actual age, and some have lost deals because of it in the recent past.
Cesar Altagracia, a top prospect from the Dominican Republic verbally agreed to a roughly $4 million deal with the San Diego Padres. That came to an end when MLB did its due diligence and discovered that he falsified documents to portray himself as a 14-year-old (eligible to sign later) when he was already 19 years old. The deal was pulled.
News rocked MLB this spring that the Cleveland Guardians canceled a $2.8 million agreement with a Dominican prospect known by the name of David Severino. Reports revealed that Major League Baseball suspended the teenage switch hitter after unearthing an age-fraud plot. Severino’s legal name is Daury David Severino Damaso per ESPN, and he’s reportedly 16 years old, not 13 or 14 like the Guardians thought.
So despite the impressive skills and build of Sosa, there will be a lot of skepticism and media digging to find out if he is the real deal. Frustrated parents who have spent thousands trying to position their kids for success chimed in.
“But kids in the US cannot get signed and paid like him,” one father complained.
“Too much too soon…,” said one fan.
“You have all of these obsessed United States Travel Ball Parents acting all weird and cringe spending thousands of dollars a year. Then you see this report of a 12 year old kid from the Dominican Republic whose allegedly getting a 4 Million Dollar Signing Bonus. This is too funny,” one user quipped.
“This is the continued outsourcing of baseball. Why there are so many latinos is like asking why so many Indians in your office. They get them young and lock them in cheap as indentured. Needs to stop. Guarantee on all fronts the best talent is American,” one skeptical fan said.
“He’s 12. Can you tell me who is referring to him as elite?,” one X user asked.
“This is dumb,” another fan said.” Good for the kid, but a lot can change between 12 years old and 18 years old. Tigers are wasting money.”
International Signings Take Center Stage During MLB Collective Bargaining Dispute
While signing young players is not uncommon, this comes as MLB’s collective-bargaining deal expires on Dec. 1. In addition to a proposed unprecedented salary cap, international and domestic signings are at the center of overhaul discussions, with the league and players on extremely different sides of the fence on these changes.
The rules for international recruiting have always been looser than those governing U.S. born players. There’s an opinion that the recent superiority that Latin countries show in baseball comes from the resources that American-funded organizations give them and the money MLB teams throw at prospects from a young age.
During a meeting in June between the MLPBA and the league, MLB proposed a drastic overhaul to the game’s amateur-entry system covering domestic and international amateurs.
High school players would be ineligible for the domestic draft and need to be at least two years removed from graduation to be selected
An international draft would be implemented for every player outside of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico
The domestic draft, currently 20 rounds, and international draft both would last 12 rounds
The minimum age for international entry would move from 16 to 18. The minimum age for the domestic draft would be 20 on Sept. 1. College players would be eligible after their sophomore year, as opposed to their junior year currently
Signing bonuses for both would be hard-slotted and capped at $200 million — around what international players get now and slashed in half from the current system for domestic players.
College baseball, which MLB in a statement called “an increasingly important pathway,” would become a mandatory stop in the domestic development pipeline.
Current major leaguers reacted swiftly, with the union issuing a statement blasting the proposal as something that “would cripple the next generation of players and damage the future of our game.”
Gary Sheffield Warned Us In 2007
As you can see in this case, when it comes to international players, MLB will always be able to circumvent any hurdles, as they are doing with this pre-agreement with Sosa. Being able to pay younger, international players less money than you would have to pay an American player – as Gary Sheffield once stated and was vilified for – leads to the influx we have now.
In an interview with GQ magazine in 2007 addressing the decline of African-American baseball players, Sheffield, a member of the Detroit Tigers at the time, said Latin players have replaced African-Americans as baseball’s most prevalent minority because they are easier to control:
“I called it years ago. What I called is that you’re going to see more black faces, but there ain’t no English going to be coming out. [It’s about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do — being able to control them.
“Where I’m from, you can’t control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that’s a person that you’re going to talk to with respect, you’re going to talk to like a man.
“These are the things my race demands. So, if you’re equally good as this Latin player, guess who’s going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys.”
Situations such as these only lead to more complicated discussions about the balance in baseball at the amateur level as the MLB percentage of foreign talent in Major League Baseball, rises past 30 percent of the entire league.
But how young is too young? Even for an arrangement that doesn’t kick in for another four years.