Uh Oh.

They're making young talent much older these days

Thanks for being here. We appreciate you.

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This is not an original tale, but bear with me: The San Diego Padres just nullified a $4 million contract with a young player in the Dominican Republic who turned out to be not so young.

The case was pretty blatant, even by the standards of this longtime practice in other countries of ambitious, hungry players and their oft-corrupt scouts working hard to get noticed by Major League Baseball teams. This particular player — he’s been going by the name Cesar Altagracia, according to The Athletic — represented himself as a 14-year-old shortstop. In fact, MLB determined, he’s 19.

I mean, that’s bad. But what is maybe more remarkable is that this person, and let’s just go ahead and call him Cesar, successfully represented the Dominican Republic at the 2022 Under-12 Baseball World Cup and at the U-15 Pan American Championships this past summer.

Just to repeat: In 2022, a then 17-year-old was successfully passed off as a person able to play for an under-12 national team.

I expect we’ve got a few veteran travel-ball coaches in the audience today. Any chance you wouldn’t notice the youngster who drove himself to your U-12 team’s tournament?

Anyway, the big brains at baseball world headquarters figured this one out. Since the deal with the Padres couldn’t be officially signed until 2027, when Altagracia was supposed to have finally turned 16 (missed it by that much), it simply becomes a no-deal. Done and done.

But MLB is so avaricious about acquiring talent, whenever and under whatever circumstances occur, that the league’s punishment for a player like Cesar Altagracia blatantly lying about his age is…a one-year ban before he can apply for reinstatement.

He’ll be 20 then. Or maybe 15. Could be something in between. And since teams believe what they want to believe, it may not ultimately matter at all. Welcome to the show, kid.

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