Despite years of corruption and criticism, the entry point for talented players from the Dominican Republic into Major League Baseball’s development pipeline remains a Wild West form of free agency. Scouts fan out across the Caribbean country in search of talented players as young as 10 years old who then live and train at academies in hopes of reaching a handshake deal on a multimillion-dollar contract with an MLB franchise before they’re 16. There are mounting examples of players being pressured to falsify their age by as many as seven or eight years to increase their value.