Baseball really hasn’t been a purely American sport for over 140 years. In the 1860s, the sugar trade brought the game to Cuba, and after the Ten Years’ War in Cuba sent its citizens fleeing across the Caribbean, the game spread. When the United States won the Spanish-American War, baseball became a key mode of communication between the US soldiers in the area and the inhabitants of the area. Soon after the turn of the 20th century, the Caribbean had its own leagues.
Those first leagues were held during the summer, and as the players got better, major-league teams began quietly signing talent away from the area, but when they came to the US, the teams had the players change their name (Victor Felipe Pellot became Vic Power, for instance) to fit more easily into the American fabric. As the decades followed, more talent came from those leagues, and the MLB began looking more to the area. The Latin American leagues, however, weren’t thrilled about this and pursued a better relationship that didn’t involve the MLB relentlessly stealing talent from their league. Eventually, leagues began playing in the winter. The MLB agreed to send some players there, and they agreed to not directly stop the region’s legends from returning for an off-season appearance. The new Winter Leagues agreed to allow MLB teams to scout the area with a more official relationship.
This lasted for a few decades before MLB teams began to seek an alternative. Sending players overseas was expensive, and the players were far away. It would be preferable to have league in the US where prospects could play against other prospects instead of the inconsistent talent of the Latin American Winter Leagues. In 1992, the MLB established the Arizona Fall League. This gave the MLB a domestic winter league, and players could be cared for and monitored easier and with all the luxuries of the modern game.
The Arizona Fall League often becomes home to many of the top prospects in baseball. While most of the players are from AA or AAA, each team can send one A-ball player. Teams utilize the league for several reasons. One, the league gives the prospect experience against other top prospects. Two, it gives players that may have been injured or signed late a chance to gain more experience or innings. Three, it’s a chance for MLB teams to move players around to a different position, be coached on the position, and get to play that position against good competition. Fourth and finally, it’s a final audition as teams ask whether or not they need to go get another player to bridge the gap for that player.
The AFL features six, 35-man rosters, and each MLB team sends 7 players. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a look at each roster, and we’ll look at a brief scouting report on them as well as a quick examination of why they might be there.
