The Dominican Republic has 11 million people and produces nearly 10% of all MLB players. The answer isn't talent — it's a perfect storm of culture, economics, and infrastructure unlike anything else in the world.
The Dominican Republic has a population of roughly 11 million people — about 3% the size of the United States. And yet, on 2026 MLB Opening Day rosters, the Dominican Republic placed 93 players, accounting for nearly 10% of the entire league. A kid born there is statistically five times more likely to start in an MLB lineup than a kid born in the United States. On the mound, that number jumps to eight times more likely.
More than 30% of the Dominican Republic's population lives in poverty. For generations, the realistic paths forward for a young Dominican man were limited: the sugar cane fields, the hotel industry, garment factories. Then baseball arrived — and with it, the possibility of something else entirely. As pitcher Pedro Martínez once said: "I didn't see a better path because I saw no other path."
The Los Angeles Dodgers opened the first MLB training academy on the island in 1987. Within 16 years, all 30 MLB franchises had followed suit. Today, every MLB organization maintains a facility in the Dominican Republic — world-class complexes with professional fields, strength and conditioning equipment, nutritionists, medical staff, and coaching at the highest level.
As former Colorado Rockies executive Dick Balderson once explained: "Instead of signing four American guys at $25,000 each, you sign 20 Dominican guys for $5,000 each." MLB teams could cast an extraordinarily wide net — signing 450 to 500 Dominican players every year.
Before a player ever sets foot in an MLB academy, they typically pass through another layer of the system that is uniquely Dominican: the buscón. The word comes from buscar — to search. A buscón is an independent trainer-agent who identifies talented kids as young as 12 or 13, trains them full-time, and presents them to MLB scouts when they're old enough to sign at 16. More than a thousand buscones operate across the Dominican Republic.
San Pedro de Macorís, a city of roughly 200,000 people on the southeastern coast, has produced more MLB shortstops than any other city on earth. Sammy Sosa, Alfonso Soriano, Robinson Canó, Luis Castillo, Fernando Tatis Sr. The city is so famous for producing middle infielders that its unofficial motto is seis-cuatro-tres — Spanish for a 6-4-3 double play.
American youth baseball has seasons. In the Dominican Republic, baseball has no off-season. The Dominican Winter League runs from October through January, when the American season has long ended. Dominican players develop year-round, and the gap in annual training hours compounds over years.
When a youth baseball team from the United States or Canada travels to the Dominican Republic and competes against local academy players, they are playing against kids shaped by a culture where baseball is not recreation — it is identity, opportunity, and hope. That competition recalibrates a player's understanding of what dedication looks like.
That is the experience Passport Sports is built around — and it is why the Dominican Republic is the only place in the world where we do it.
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