“Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here, but it’s not doing anything to stop it.”
MLB teams paid Dominican prospects $1.042 billion in bonuses, and trainers and moneylenders skimmed up to half of it. Trainers take 35 to 50 percent. Lenders charge effective annual rates past 150 percent, and David Ortiz put money into one of them. Fewer than 10 percent of those kids ever play in the majors, but the teams get their cheap pipeline either way.