The Power of Incentives or the Decline of Puerto Ricans in the MLB

If you follow baseball, these names will likely ring a bell:

Roberto Alomar, Sandy Alomar, Carlos Baerga, Wil Cordero, Carlos Delgado, Jose Hernandez, Javy Lopez, Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, Benito Santiago, Ruben Sierra, Jose Valentin, and Bernie Williams.

Besides numerous All-Star appearances, what these 13 Puerto Ricans have in common is that they were signed as amateur free agents from 1982-1988, writes Brian Joura.

Puerto Rico then had the unfortunate honor of being included in the MLB amateur draft in 1990 -- the only territory outside of the 50 U.S. states and Canada to be part of the draft -- "meaning that players from the island were subject to the same signing rules and terms of draft eligibility as players in the U.S. and Canada."

This was unfortunate because now Puerto Rican amateurs players -- i.e. teenage boys -- weren't eligible for big contracts from MLB organizations like other players from foreign countries. This also meant that teams no longer had an incentive to put money into facilities and training into the island since now their chances of holding onto players they groomed were greatly diminished.

The result, Joura writes, is that only four Puerto Ricans have achieved the same level of success in MLB as their predecessors: Carlos Beltran, Jorge Posada, Javy Vazquez and Jose Vidro.

(And last August, the Puerto Rican Winter League folded after 69 years because of lack of funds. It should be back this October, however.)

In turn, baseball teams have shifted their development money to countries like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Here are the number of Venezuelan-, Dominican-, and Puerto Rican-born players in baseball that have made their debuts since 1980 broken down by decade (data from baseball-reference.com):

It's pretty clear that Puerto Ricans are the big losers here. It's very likely that there will be less Puerto Rican-born players in the MLB in the 2000s than in both of the previous two decades.

(Hat tip: Sabrenomics)