Alden GonzalezApr 7, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.Follow on XMultiple Authors
His family believes his organs failed after he was repeatedly injected with performance-enhancing drugs at the academy. For months, his death swept the Dominican Republic, dominating headlines and sparking outrage across a nation that has long grappled with the exploitation of its baseball-playing minors.
“Everything is messy,” a team executive who has spent years scouting in the Dominican Republic said. “It’s messy because we’re making it messy, because we won’t f—ing regulate it, and it just keeps going and going.”
Their success made the race to identify the next crop of Latino stars fiercer, at a time when international-bonus-pool limits allowed teams to project how much money would be available to them several years in advance. The early deals that trigger a litany of other problems escalated because of it.
“The industry is moving too fast,” said Jonathan Peralta, an attorney who represents amateur players in the Dominican Republic, “but it’s moving too fast for everybody.”
“It’s straight lunacy,” said Junior Noboa, executive director of the Dominican Republic’s baseball commissioner’s office. “I spent almost 30 years signing players. Never did I think you’d start seeing 12-, 13-year-old kids signing.”
Signing bonus pools were first introduced that year, providing teams with an allotment of cash — starting with $2.9 million in 2012 and rising as high as $8.04 million in 2026 — that could only be used on international talent. The pools brought — in theory, at least — structure. Hard caps, introduced in 2017, brought predictability, allowing teams to accurately project how much money they would be allowed to spend several years in advance.
Often, though, the reason is much simpler — to exert leverage in an effort to trim signing bonuses.
“They’re like cockfighting owners,” one trainer said. “The only difference is cockfighting owners stay true to their word.”
When teams pull out weeks or even days before signing day, a litany of issues follow: Trainers lose money and are often forced to close academies because of unpaid debts. Parents owe loan sharks money they can’t pay back. Kids are recycled into the following year’s signing class, by which point many are deemed too old.
“The level of trust has almost evaporated,” another high-ranking team executive said. “On both sides.”
A draft, Nina acknowledged, would hurt his country economically, given how many earn a living off baseball players. But it would end the exploitative pre-deals.
“I’ve been thinking of ways we can improve the system, and the only way I understand that would bring order to this situation is a draft,” Nina said. “Not that a draft suits us. But a draft might be what we need.”
MLB has long been pushing for an international draft, selling it as the only way to truly eliminate pre-deals, but the MLBPA continues to stress that better solutions exist — mainly, by punishing the teams that engage in wrongdoing under the current system.
“The inability to make secret deals because you don’t know who’s going to draft whom is really the best systemic approach to this problem of rules violations when they get to the signing market,” Manfred said then.
“Let’s be clear — the disorder that we have in the international market isn’t simply the responsibility of the trainers, like MLB wants everyone to believe,” one prominent Dominican trainer said. “They have on their hands, with draft or no draft, a way to improve this system. The disloyalty in the game is in their hands, not ours, because they’re the ones that implement the rules.”
Former MLBPA executive director Tony Clark, who resigned from his post amid scandal two months ago, echoed a similar sentiment in March 2025.
“At the end of the day, you can’t agree to a pre-acuerdo unless a team proposes one,” Clark said then. “That means there’s an opportunity to find out who is proposing them and make a determination based on that as to how the system needs to function moving forward. But there’s not an interest in doing it, despite knowing that that’s happening, and instead default back to a draft, a draft, a draft.”
The last major penalty in the international market was handed out more than eight years ago, when former Atlanta Braves general manager John Coppolella was banned for life and forced to forfeit 13 international signees for circumventing signing limits.
“While our elected positions are open to all players, we view representation as far more than just a title on an executive board. In that spirit, our player services staff and leadership are in constant communication with players on issues big and small, and in connection with any negotiations, we seek and receive input in numerous ways from Latino players on international market proposals and other issues.”
IN THE WAKE of Ismael Pérez’s death, Junior Noboa spearheaded a system by which his office would work to regulate academies, forcing facilities to meet certain requirements based on location, living conditions, education programs and drug testing. From November 2024 to January 2025, Noboa said, they had registered more than 400 academies, though he acknowledged it barely scratched the surface.
Steroids have historically been readily available over the counter in any Dominican pharmacy and training facility that possesses the means to access them, regardless of age and without even a doctor’s note. Anti-doping programs have been nonexistent within its numerous baseball leagues.
The law is scheduled to go into place in August, but whether it ultimately makes a difference — a source of considerable doubt given the lack of an established anti-doping program in the country and the amount of resources required to conduct drug testing at that scale — remains to be seen.
Under MLB’s current CBA, players are subject to unlimited, randomized drug tests after they sign their first pro contracts. But only a limited number must comply with tests before then. Those who are designated “Level 2” under the CBA, a term used to describe the top 150 international amateur players based on an internal ranking, are subject to random drug tests before signing with a team, according to the current CBA.
League officials tout the positivity rates in the Dominican Summer League, stating it dropped from 6.1% to 2.9% from 2005 to 2006, when MLB began to test and educate players, and has been below 1% each of the past 13 years. But those same officials acknowledge that it doesn’t necessarily speak to amateurs taking steroids before they sign.
One international scouting director believes around 80% of those who sign out of the Dominican Republic are given steroids when they’re between the ages of 11 and 13 to attain pre-deals, then start to wean off leading up to when they can officially sign contracts and enter MLB’s testing program. An agent who represents a lot of players from the Dominican Republic believed that number to be too high, instead guessing it might be around 30%. But, he added: “I know it’s significant.”
“It’s like they just talk through each other,” one international scouting director said. “And like always, these kids get left behind.”
ISMAEL PERÉZ WAS a shy kid who hated having his picture taken but loved playing shortstop. He admired Lindor and often mimicked Elly De La Cruz, who grew up just 40 miles away from Ismael in Sabana Grande de Boyá. He dreamed, like so many others, of building a better life for his family.
“Ismael was a very smart kid, very motivated,” Ismael’s father, Inoel, said. “He was obsessed with baseball. His whole thing was to get us out of here. At 5, 6 a.m. he was out here already, training. He was obsessed with baseball. And he always told me his dream was to get to the major leagues. He would say, ‘Papi, I’m going to get you out of here.'”
Inoel can no longer sleep past 2 a.m. The last time he heard his son’s voice, Ismael was on a hospital bed wailing desperately, “Abrázame, Papi! Abrázame!” (Hug me, Daddy! Hug me!) The memory of those cries still keeps Inoel up at night.
Ismael’s family and their legal representatives allege Ismael was given performance-enhancing substances at the academy of a former professional pitcher named Yordy Cabrera, who has denied any responsibility. Cabrera, who referred ESPN to his lawyer when reached for comment, denied injecting Ismael with the steroid boldenone in an Instagram post on Nov. 19, 2024, saying that he had “absolutely nothing to do” with his death.
“He was willing to do anything,” Iris said, clutching another framed photograph of Ismael. “That’s what drove him to his death.”
Cabrera’s lawyer, Domingo Fabian, countered that Ismael died of hepatitis B, a viral liver infection. Fabian told ESPN his client is “completely innocent,” saying the family is attempting to blackmail Cabrera and “disparage his name” while adding that they only filed a lawsuit after Cabrera declined to pay them. Fabian alleged Ismael was at Cabrera’s academy for only three days; Ismael’s family says he had been attending since he was 8.
Héctor Gómez, one of the most prominent baseball reporters in the Dominican Republic, described Ismael’s case as “the drop that overflowed the cup.”
“This case exploded,” Gómez said. “There’s been recognition of similar cases, but they didn’t have this type of exposure. This one had the exposure, and the parents were also willing to talk.”
Near Christmas 2024, the family’s legal team filed a complaint against Olga Diná Llaverias, national director for the department of boys, girls, adolescents and family for the attorney general’s office, for acting negligently in response to the initial complaint. The next six months consisted of little movement, prompting a march to be held at the state capitol the week of June 16. Hundreds of people gathered then to demand that the results of the autopsy be revealed, but nothing has happened.