Enhancing the protection of foreign players in minor league baseball: What is the role of law and policy?

Foreign players now account for a sizeable portion of the workforce employed by Major League Baseball (‘MLB’) clubs in both the Major and Minor Leagues. Of the 750 players on active Major League rosters, 30.7 per cent in 2017 were born outside the United States. MLB clubs also employ over 7,000 players in their network of affiliated Minor Leagues and 37.4 per cent were foreign players in 2017. While the MLB collective bargaining agreement governs some aspects of the recruitment of foreign international amateurs, and MLB has agreements with other professional leagues related to the movement of foreign professional players, the recruitment of foreign international amateurs operates in a largely unregulated manner. This paper sets out MLB's system of foreign player recruitment, identifies recent issues in Asia and Latin America and proposes reforms to enhance the protection of foreign players and the accountability of MLB clubs.