Nationals Farm Authority

Hat tip to David, a reader here at NFA, who pointed me to this posting by Paul DePodesta. DePodesta is the former GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers who is now a Special Assistant for Baseball Operations for the San Diego Padres.

Who better than someone in the industry to define exactly what the Dominican Summer League is. Without further ado …

The Dominican Summer League (DSL) does not produce big offensive statistics. The DSL is not akin to amateur baseball in the United States in which players routinely have a .400 average with a bunch of home runs. Actually, it’s the converse. These are young kids, anywhere from 16-19 who are not yet fully developed physically and yet are playing with wood bats on Major League size fields. Furthermore, the pitchers are usually much more advanced than the hitters, throwing with good velocity and mixing in some off-speed pitches, and they see these advanced pitchers day in and day out.

I would say that the first cousin of the Dominican Summer League is the Cape Cod League, the preeminent college wood bat summer league. As in the Dominican, the players in the Cape are essentially the all-stars from around the country, and they compete against each other every day (unlike a typical amateur schedule which is only a few days a week of games) with wood bats. Due to all of these factors, offensive numbers from the Cape are typically well below that of a normal minor league circuit.

So, imagine the Cape Cod League, but take four years of age and physical development of off the players, and you can understand why even the best offensive players post pedestrian statistics.