KELVIN COLÓN was scouting the inaugural Buzzer Beater tournament in Puerto Rico last week, a 32-team event that included public schools, private schools and baseball academies. Colón, a Los Angeles Dodgers scout, said he saw legitimate prospects and predicted a pair of players who could be taken in mid-to-late rounds of the draft.
The tournament arrived as Major League Baseball observed Roberto Clemente Day, commemorating the Hall of Fame outfielder who died in a 1972 plane crash while delivering earthquake relief in Nicaragua. Clemente, the island’s first baseball superstar, remains a central figure in Puerto Rico’s baseball culture and a touchstone for generations of players.
Nearly two dozen people interviewed for this story said the pipeline from Puerto Rico to the majors has deteriorated in recent years. Many named MLB’s 1989 decision to include Puerto Rico in the Rule 4 draft as a turning point, removing the ability of island prospects to sign as international free agents at 16 and placing them in the same pool as U.S. high-school seniors. “We are neither one thing nor the other,” an agent based in Puerto Rico said, adding that inclusion in the draft “is definitely what has hurt us the most.”
The decline was visible this July in Philadelphia, when no Puerto Rican-born players were on either All-Star team for the first time since 1988. In the days leading up to the Midsummer Classic, five players born in Puerto Rico were selected in the 2026 MLB draft, none before the 13th round. No Puerto Rican-born player has gone in the first round since Heliot Ramos in 2017. So far this season, 27 players born in Puerto Rico have appeared in major-league games, compared with 54 in 2001. New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor leads Puerto Rican-born players with 1.9 bWAR this year, a mark that would have ranked 13th among such players in 2001.
The lack of depth was also evident at the World Baseball Classic, when several of Puerto Rico’s top active major leaguers — including Lindor, Carlos Correa, Jose Berrios and Javier Baez — were unavailable largely due to injuries, and the island exited with a quarterfinal loss to Italy. “It’s poor right now,” a longtime MLB front office executive said. Interviewees also cited broader challenges, including poverty more than double that of Mississippi, which limits families’ ability to participate in showcase culture, and a shortage of accessible facilities.
