Baseball: U.S. Teams Eye Games in Cuba, Safe Talent Pipeline

Restoring full diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States could lead to Major League Baseball pre-season games on the Communist island by next year and a safer pipeline for Cuban talent.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said exhibition games in Cuba ahead of next April's start of the 2016 season "would be my best guess, based on the state of the conversations with the government," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

As a trade embargo and diplomatic shutdown since the 1960s between Cuba and the United States nears an end, U.S. officials hope to use baseball to make inroads much the same way US officials used table tennis to bridge cultural gaps with China in the 1970s.

"Cuba is a great market for us in two ways. Obviously, it's a great talent market. It's a country where baseball is embedded in the culture," Manfred told the Miami Herald.

"I can envision a situation, assuming this is consistent with the government's policy on Cuba, where we could have ongoing exhibition game activity in Cuba.

"We're going to follow the government's lead on when it makes sense for us to try to play some games there."

Not since the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers played each other in Cuba in 1959 have two U.S. clubs faced off there, although the Baltimore Orioles played a home-and-home series with Cuba's national team in 1999.

Cuban baseball officials visited the United States earlier this month as their team prepared for the Pan American Games in Canada, telling Major League Baseball's website they are happy about the opportunities for baseball now that barriers are breaking down.

"This is an important and symbolic time for us to be here and we are happy we are here while it's happening," said Cuban baseball commissioner Heriberto Suarez Pereda.

"We are all very pleased with the progress the countries are making."

Since U.S. sanctions were imposed on Cuba, 95 players have found their way to Major League Baseball, including stars Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers and Aroldis Chapman of the Reds, but that has required defecting, often in risky journeys run by shady characters through third countries and done for the promise of money from future rich baseball deals.

The trade embargo forces Cuban players to establish residency outside U.S. borders to be considered a free agent and become available to the highest bidder.

Establishing relations would formalize a safer path for Cuban talent to reach the major leagues, likely with provisions for protecting the integrity of the Cuban league through a posting system in a format similar to Major League Baseball's deal with the Japan League.

The agreement requires Japanese players to spend a certain number of years in Japan, unless their team agrees to post them for a fee to allow U.S. teams to buy negotiation rights.

That keeps the Japan League solid and developing talent but allows for elite players to make the jump to American clubs.

Cuban officials have already allowed some players to compete in Japan, Mexico and Canada in exchange for keeping much of the money in the contract. But that has done little to stem the tide of defections.

"It's changing little by little and we want it to change, but we can't change it by ourselves," said Cuban Baseball Federation president Higinio Velez on the MLB website.

"Baseball fans in the United States want to see Cubans and Cubans want to see players from the United States."

Young Cuban talent has defected so much in recent seasons that the once-mighty amateur squad has been weakened.

In addition, the Cuban league has gone to having all 16 of its clubs play only half a season with the top eight taking top talent from the rest and completing the campaign.

"Of course, (defecting) affects our league, but we have to keep looking for talent because we have a lot of good players in Cuba," Suarez Pereda said.

"The Serie Nacional system will never go away. We just have to keep working hard. There's still a great future for baseball in Cuba."

And it's one that could see greater partnership with their American counterparts