The PGA of America will have a new CEO once again this year.
Derek Sprague announced on Wednesday that he will be stepping down as the PGA of America’s CEO this month in order to return to upstate New York and help both his mother and mother-in-law, who he said are needing more care as they get older.
Advertisement
Sprague will remain in an advisory role to ensure a smooth transition with the next CEO, which the PGA of America said it expects to announce in the coming weeks.
“At my daughter’s wedding last month in upstate New York, it became clear that my family needs me nearby to assist with the care of my mother and mother‑in‑law,” Sprague said in a statement. “Focusing on family has become my priority, and the best decision for me is to step away from my role as CEO and return home to be with them.
“Serving as CEO of the PGA of America over the past year has been an incredible honor, and I will always be grateful for the trust placed in me by the Board and thank them for their understanding. I also want to thank our staff for their tireless dedication. Their passion and commitment inspire me, and I know the Association will continue to thrive as it carries forward the proud mission of serving our members and growing the game.”
The PGA of America is separate from the PGA Tour. It has roughly 30,000 professionals throughout the country, and is in charge of both the Ryder Cup when it is held in the United States and the men’s, women’s and senior PGA Championships each season.
Sprague became a PGA of America member back in 1993, and has held several leadership roles there throughout his time with the organization, including serving as its president from 2014-16. He was selected to replace former Deutsche Bank Americas CEO Seth Waugh as the PGA of America’s CEO last January, which made him the first former president to take that job.
Sprague was also in charge of overseeing the Ryder Cup last fall at Bethpage Black, where the Americans fell to Europe in a rough outing despite a surprising late surge on Sunday. There was plenty of criticism from the Europeans over fan behavior at that event, and Sprague ended up reaching out to Rory McIlroy to apologize for the verbal abuse that he and his wife Erica received throughout the tournament.
“I got a lovely email from Derek Sprague apologizing,” McIlroy said in November, via the BBC. “Erica worked with Derek at the PGA of America back in the day, so we know Derek and his wife pretty well. He couldn’t have been more gracious or apologetic and he wrote us a lovely letter, which we really appreciated.”
Sprague’s resignation marks the second major leadership shakeup in professional golf in recent months. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is going to step down at the end of his contract later this year, and the Tour hired former NFL executive Brian Rolapp as the new CEO to take over day-to-day operations.
Advertisement
The PGA Tour’s season will start next week with the Sony Open at the Wai’alae Country Club in Hawaii.
The attorney for Trinidad Chambliss is making another effort to convince the NCAA to clear the Ole Miss quarterback for a sixth year of eligibility.
The university made a third filing to the NCAA on Wednesday on behalf of Chambliss’ eligibility waiver — a four-page document that was drafted by attorney Tom Mars.
Advertisement
In the latest filing, Mars pushes back against the NCAA’s original assertion that the school did not provide sufficient medical evidence to meet its standard for granting the waiver, and he suggested the potential for legal action in a Mississippi court.
“To avoid a Mississippi Circuit Court concluding that these dual standards are not unlawfully arbitrary and capricious, the NCAA would have to provide a legitimate reason why its bylaws contain two different standards for medical documentation that deal with the same situation,” Mars wrote. “That might be a tough hill to climb.”
In a story Monday, Yahoo Sports detailed the situation with Chambliss, who is seeking a sixth year of eligibility through the NCAA’s waiver process. He believes that an ailment — respiratory issues tied to an eventual diagnosis of enlarged tonsils and subsequent surgery — prevented him from playing the 2022 season. He is requesting a medical hardship for that year. Chambliss used his redshirt the year before as a freshman at Division II Ferris State.
In his latest letter, Mars says the NCAA’s case manager told an Ole Miss administrator that the statement from Chambliss’ physician was “sufficient proof” of his incapacity to play in 2022 but that the staff was concerned about lack of “contemporaneous medical documentation.”
Advertisement
Mars reemphasizes that Chambliss’ health condition “was far more serious than just a simple case of tonsillitis” and that it spanned the entire 2022-23 season. He rebuffs the NCAA claim that Ole Miss “failed to meet” the medical documentation standard and that it “would not withstand scrutiny in a court of law.”
Since the Chambliss family retained Mars in mid-December, the attorney and Ole Miss officials have made three filings to the NCAA totaling nearly 100 pages.
In an interesting wrinkle, LSU coach Lane Kiffin, three weeks after leaving Ole Miss, was the one to first contact and convince Mars to help Chambliss in the case. Mars confirmed that news when reached Wednesday. He offered no other comment about Kiffin’s role.
The NCAA originally signaled to Ole Miss that it needed more information to grant Chambliss’ waiver request. The state of the waiver is unclear, and no timeline for a decision exists. The NCAA D-I Academic Eligibility Committee is not scheduled to meet this week, but is slated for two days of in-person meetings next week from the NCAA convention near Washington, D.C.
His contract is worth in excess of $5 million, according to those with knowledge of the deal, giving the quarterback specific financial damages for a possible legal challenge if the waiver is denied. Mars told Yahoo Sports earlier this week that Chambliss has already suffered financial “damages” because of the NCAA’s delay in its decision.
Advertisement
Mars mostly stopped representing athletes in eligibility cases about three years ago, shifting his cases to more coaches and athletic administrators. However, he took exception to the merits of Chambliss’ case and is representing the quarterback pro bono.
Trinidad’s case for a sixth year of eligibility hinges on him proving to the NCAA that he was unable to play in 2022 because of the tonsil issue. Ole Miss filed a 91-page document, authored by Mars, to the association on Dec. 22. Mars drafted another document sent to the NCAA on Sunday reemphasizing that the organization has the sufficient evidence needed to grant the waiver based on the association’s own bylaw language.
As part of the 91-page filing, Mars included documents from Dr. Anthony Howard, an ear, nose and throat specialist who treated Trinidad for the condition in December 2022. Ultimately, Howard determined that the quarterback suffered from “enlarged tonsils” and other ailments that limited his ability to play in 2022.
It’s easy to take shots at the leaders of college athletics for letting their industry spiral to the point of all-consuming dysfunction, but give them credit for one thing.
They have managed to come up with arguably the worst business model on earth.
Advertisement
Here’s how it works:
• Have an open bidding system for coaches and athletes, regulated by no one, that allows them to change jobs at will regardless of the length of their contracts and in fact encourages them to exert their leverage to obtain better deals every year.
• Do not pay the players for their ability to play football because that would make them employees. Rather, pay for their “marketing rights,” which avoids the employment conversation but complicates legal recourse in contractual disputes and ultimately leaves schools more vulnerable to chicanery and broken promises.
• Create a system that supposedly regulates payroll costs and ensures competitive balance by requiring a third-party clearinghouse to approve deals that don’t conform to their rules, only to then instruct said clearinghouse to ignore most of the rules they wrote because they’d probably lose a lawsuit.
Advertisement
• Ask your most successful and loyal customers, the donors, to continue shoveling money at those players for no real benefit other than the fleeting enjoyment of watching them play, not knowing if they’ll be worth watching play in the first place. Then, after those players decide to play the leverage game again, ask your richest fans to deliver an even bigger pile of money for a new set of players who will be gone in a year.
Take a bow, college sports. This is true brilliance at work.
While the College Football Playoff and March Madness always provide compelling theater, including a highly anticipated set of semifinals Thursday and Friday, the inner workings of college sports have never looked more unpleasant, disorganized and utterly doomed to be an anvil of failure hanging around the neck of those in charge.
We have roughly one-third of college football players in the transfer portal.
Advertisement
We have quarterbacks commanding $4 million and $5 million deals — essentially the equivalent of an NFL rookie salary for the No. 11 overall pick — that aren’t even guaranteed stars.
We have schools who begged for rules and guardrails to bring sanity and structure to the ecosystem using marketing companies to create financial packages for players, allowing them to exceed the revenue-share cap they negotiated just last year in the House v. NCAA settlement.
Demond Williams Jr.’s fight with Washington is just one of many problems with the current state of affairs in college sports. (Kevin Terrell/Getty Images)
(Kevin Terrell via Getty Images)
We have a college basketball product that is wide open for players who were professional athletes playing in the NBA G League or Europe, including former NBA draft picks. Good luck to the NCAA’s attorneys when someone who has signed an NBA contract in the past inevitably wants to come back to college for a big payday and gets denied eligibility because that’s an arbitrary bridge too far.
Advertisement
We have the NCAA throwing its hands up in the air on most of this stuff, waiting for Congress to pass legislation that gives it legal protection to enforce its rules. Given that the congressional lobbying effort hasn’t borne fruit since former NCAA president Mark Emmert started it more than six years ago, good luck getting that to the finish line now that we’re in another midterm election year and there are various domestic and international crises that will likely command most of their time.
Oh, and as bad as it looks based on stuff that’s public, the environment is so much more chaotic and distrustful behind the scenes.
Here’s an example.
A power conference administrator passed along a document signed on Dec. 3 — national signing day for high school recruits — that looked like an NIL deal between Tennessee’s Volunteer Club and a recruit that had flipped to the Vols that day.
Advertisement
But the reason the contract had been floating around among outraged administrative types was that the contract offering $85,000 worth of stipends, a paid apartment in Knoxville and $25,000 to pay the agent’s fees — while requiring nothing in return — was allegedly signed by the athlete’s grandmother.
Tennessee’s competitors felt it was a blatant attempt to circumvent the revenue-sharing cap. The document was sent to the NCAA, the SEC and the College Sports Commission, which is now the responsible party for policing this stuff. Nobody knew quite what to make of it.
Sources connected to the deal told Yahoo Sports the document was written in error by an inexperienced agent who didn’t know if a minor was allowed to sign a contract in that state and terminated it later in the day. Yahoo Sports has reviewed copies of the termination letter and a more standard NIL agreement with the player dated Dec. 5.
The point here is not that anybody did anything wrong. But it does provide a look into the inner workings of a business that is so unregulated that it would allow for such a mistake to happen in the first place while at the same time being such a believable story of potential cheating that other schools were actively trying to sic the CSC enforcement staff on Tennessee.
Advertisement
And, again, it’s worth emphasizing that the entire point of the House settlement and the creation of the CSC was to put entities like the Volunteer Club out of business and prevent these kinds of deals, or at the very least, construct a solid wall between recruiting activity and money flowing through booster-funded collectives.
After millions in legal fees, the power conferences couldn’t even get that part right once the lawyers started pushing back and accusing them of colluding to restrict earnings.
So what do you have now? A system of talent procurement where some people are abiding by the rules, some are finding loopholes to do what they believe they can defend in court and others are completely ignoring the rules while daring a weakened NCAA/CSC to come get them.
And because it’s so vague who’s paying players through revenue share and who’s promising payments through third parties that may or may not entirely be within the rules, coaches and administrators at a lot of schools feel that their only choices are to use the flimsiness of the system to their advantage or be taken advantage of.
Advertisement
Nobody should want this.
But it is the product of many choices over many years made by university presidents, athletic administrators and NCAA leadership to avoid confronting the reality that they need to tear the amateurism model down to its studs and start over.
It’s now clear they would rather have this chaos than the thorny work of building a system that pays players fairly, treats them as professionals and makes everyone accountable to the contracts they sign through collective bargaining.
It’s just one more choice, and both paths are hard. There would be real challenges trying to build that system for college sports, but as we can plainly see now, there are no magic solutions as things stand.
Advertisement
Every time they try to fix a leak, six more spring up from the bottom of the boat. So each year they just accept sinking a little deeper into the abyss, hoping for a bottom that never seems within sight.
Police say approximately $200,000 in property was stolen from Sanders’ home that night. Three days after the incident, on the day the Browns named Sanders their starting quarterback for Week 12 as Gabriel remained in concussion protocol, the former Colorado star addressed the matter while explaining that he’s in a mental space where not too much can faze him. He also lightheartedly joked that the thieves didn’t get any of his jewelry.
The break-in happened at approximately 6:46 p.m. on Nov. 16, per the police, which reported that surveillance cameras in the residence captured video of the suspects entering and exiting different parts of Sanders’ home.
The footage shows the suspects leaving the residence with stolen items at approximately 6:58 p.m., according to the news release.
Advertisement
The sheriff’s office has completed its investigation and has an active warrant for the at-large suspect’s arrest. The other three suspects are in custody, per the police.
Sanders struggled in his first regular-season action, completing only 4-of-16 passes and finishing with just 47 passing yards and one interception in a 23-16 home loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
Even after Gabriel was cleared from the concussion protocol, Sanders remained Cleveland’s starter. He wound up starting the team’s final seven games of the season. The 5-12 Browns went 3-4 with Sanders as their QB1, and two of those four losses were decided by three points or fewer.
Advertisement
Sanders, though, posted a meager 7:10 touchdown-to-interception ratio and completed only 56.6% of his passes, albeit behind an injury-riddled Browns offensive line down the stretch of the season.
After plummeting to the fifth round in last year’s draft, Sanders had to wait his turn in a crowded Cleveland quarterback room. He eventually got his shot, but now the franchise is hitting the reset button, most notably firing head coach Kevin Stefanski on Monday.
Former Michigan quarterback Davis Warren is headed to the ACC next season.
Warren committed to join Stanford on Wednesday after entering the transfer portal, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. Warren is expected to have two years of eligibility left, thanks in part to a medical redshirt he’s anticipated to receive.
Advertisement
Warren spent three seasons with the Wolverines, and was a backup to J.J. McCarthy during their national championship season in 2023. He started for the majority of the 2024 campaign, and threw for 1,199 yards with 7 touchdowns and 9 interceptions.
Stanford went just 4-8 last season, its second in the ACC. The Cardinal hired former quarterback, assistant coach and coordinator Tavita Pritchard as their next head coach in November. He replaced interim coach Frank Reich, who led the team for all of last season.
Advertisement
While Stanford has a long way to go to revive its football program — the Cardinal haven’t had a winning season since 2016, and haven’t won more than four games in a single season since 2018 — landing Warren in the transfer portal to lead the offense appears to be a very solid start for Pritchard.
Hoops 360 hosts Caroline Fenton and Cassandra Negley break down the latest developments in the WNBA CBA negotiations as the third deadline looms. Where do the league and the WNBPA stand—and is a strike on the horizon? The hosts also dive into the tipoff of Unrivaled and ask a big question: what will the Lunar Owls look like without star forward Napheesa Collier?
Advertisement
Plus, Atlanta Dream and Athletes Unlimited guard Te-Hina Paopao joins the show! Te-Hina talks about her transition from South Carolina to the professional game and shares her goals and excitement heading into the AU season.
Got questions or topics for Hoops 360? Email us at hoops360@yahoosports.com and you could hear them on the show!
01:05 – What’s the latest on the WNBA CBA?
05:05 – How far apart are the WNBA and the WNBPA?
07:39 – How would a WNBA strike impact new emerging leagues?
11:28 – What does Napheesa Collier’s absence mean for Unrivaled?
20:33 – Atlanta Dream and Athletes Unlimited guard Te-Hina Paopao joins the show
Advertisement
39:07 – College hoops: Who’s rising and falling in conference play?
39:56 – Is it panic time for LSU?
46:10 – Have we been sleeping on Vanderbilt?
48:59 – Is it panic time for Notre Dame?
53:09 – Upcoming college hoops and Unrivaled matchups
In an offseason that has seen contenders such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays already make big moves, the Chicago Cubs have taken a different approach. After winning 92 games last season, the Cubs have mostly been quiet this winter.
But the team finally made a big addition Wednesday, when the Cubs finalized a trade with the Miami Marlins to land starting pitcher Edward Cabrera, the teams announced. In exchange, Chicago is sending outfield prospect Owen Caissie, infielder Christian Hernandez and third baseman Edgardo De Leon to Miami.
Advertisement
Cabrera, 27, turned in the best season of his career in 2025, posting a 3.53 ERA over a career-high 137 2/3 innings.
For years, Cabrera was viewed as a high-upside pitcher with significant flaws. While he didn’t completely eliminate those flaws in 2025, he made major strides improving his control, which led to a career season. Cabrera cut his walk rate down to 8.3%; his previous career low was 11.3%.
That improvement was spurred by a change in his pitch mix. Cabrera relied far less on his four-seam fastball, which — despite its solid velocity — routinely got hit hard and too often landed out of the strike zone. Instead, Cabrera upped his percentage of breaking balls, which have always graded out well by pitch metrics. He also prioritized using a sinker, and while the pitch wasn’t effective, he controlled it well, which allowed him to more consistently get ahead of batters.
While it was an encouraging change, Cabrera still struggled to stay healthy in 2025. Although he threw a career-high 137 2/3 innings, he missed time due to elbow issues later in the year. He was able to return to action after missing some time and pitched fairly well down the stretch. Still, injuries have been a consistent issue for Cabrera since he broke into the majors in 2022. He has never pitched more than 26 games in a season in the majors, and he hasn’t thrown more than 150 innings in a season — including his minor-league starts — since 2019.
The acquisition comes with risk but also significant team control. Cabrera is arbitration-eligible through the 2028 MLB season and won’t be a free agent until 2029.
It’s arguably the most significant move the Cubs have made this offseason. The team made waves in November when it declined an option on starter Shota Imanaga. The pitcher later returned after the team offered him a one-year, $22.025 million qualifying offer.
Advertisement
In addition to Cabrera and Imanaga, the Cubs’ rotation should also feature 2025 All-Star Matthew Boyd, promising youngster Cade Horton and veteran Jameson Taillon — at least until Justin Steele is able to return from Tommy John surgery.
That’s not a perfect rotation, but it should be good enough to keep the team in contention, especially if Boyd and Taillon can continue to age gracefully and Imanaga bounces back after a rocky second season in the majors.
With the rotation seemingly set, the Cubs can now turn their attention to the lineup, where the team is looking to replace Kyle Tucker. On paper, the Cubs’ offense has plenty of talent even without the star outfielder, but one more big move could push the Cubs from a good team to a legitimate World Series contender.
The Washington Wizards have emerged as Atlanta Hawks point guard Trae Young’s top trade destination, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. The deal would reportedly be centered around guard C.J. McCollum’s expiring contract, per NBA reporter Marc Stein.
According to NBA insider Marc Stein, it’s believed that CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert would be directly involved in that deal. Kispert was made unavailable for Wednesday night’s game with the Philadelphia 76ers due to hamstring injury management. McCollum was ruled out, too.
Young has a $49 million player option for next season, and there’s reportedly some belief that the Hawks might have to offer draft compensation to entice a team to absorb his contract.
It has been a difficult start to the 2025-26 season for Young, who has played in only 10 games due to a knee injury. He hasn’t played since a Dec. 27 loss to the New York Knicks in which he totaled 9 points, 10 assists and 6 turnovers. He missed the entire month of November, and the Hawks went 10-5 without their four-time All-Star.
The past couple of years have been tough for Young and the Hawks, as they’ve missed out on the playoffs the past two seasons. Atlanta qualified for the play-in tournament each of those years but failed to advance. There has been plenty of speculation about the Hawks and Young splitting, and with the Feb. 5 trade deadline quickly approaching, a deal could be imminent.
Advertisement
What’s more, many of Young’s offensive stats are down significantly in the 10 games he has played this season. Last season, Young averaged 24.2 points and 11.6 assists (NBA leader) and shot 34% from 3-point range in 76 games. This year, he’s down to 19.3 points and 8.9 assists per game and is shooting 30.5% from beyond the arc. Whether it’s his health, the team or the desire to play elsewhere, something likely needs to change soon.
Since entering the NBA in 2018, Young has been one of the more prolific point guards in terms of scoring and passing. In each of the past three seasons, he has averaged a double-double in points and assists. The biggest criticisms of Young are his smaller stature and limited defensive ability.
The U.S. men’s national soccer team is now in a World Cup year, which means players are angling for a place on Mauricio Pochettino’s 26-man squad. First, though, they will aim to get themselves on the roster for the March friendlies against Belgium and Portugal in Atlanta.
A call-up to the last training camp before Pochettino selects his World Cup team in late May will not come with summer guarantees. Nor will missing out in March preclude selection to the tournament.
Advertisement
Over the next two-plus months, though, Pochettino and his staff will keep a close eye on club performances before sending out invitations. Barring injury, most of the regulars are assured of making the list. Several candidates, however, would bolster their case with strong recitals in European leagues, Major League Soccer and Mexico’s Liga MX.
Here are 10 players with the most to gain:
PSV Eindhoven forward Ricardo Pepi continues to make a case for inclusion on the USMNT’s 2026 World Cup roster.
(NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Ricardo Pepi, PSV Eindhoven
Back in PSV Eindhoven’s starting lineup and bubbling with confidence, the Texas-born striker is poised to move up the U.S. depth chart. With Pepi out of the U.S. picture until the end of 2025 — due to injuries and club playing time — Monaco’s Folarin Balogun strengthened his top-man status and Coventry City’s Haji Wright proved a worthy back-up.
Advertisement
Pepi, who will turn 23 on Friday, is in great form with goals in five of his past six PSV appearances and five goals and two assists in the seven matches before the winter break. Across all club competitions, he has 10 goals and three assists in 21 games. He is also a hot commodity on the transfer market, with PSV reportedly turning down a $35 million offer from Premier League side Fulham.
Gio Reyna, Borussia Mönchengladbach
The enigmatic midfielder bolstered his U.S. status with superb performances in the November window — his first call-up since March. But to help remain in Pochettino’s good graces and stay in the World Cup mix, the 23-year-old must continue earning starts for Mönchengladbach, the Bundesliga club he joined from Borussia Dortmund over the summer.
A sub most of the first several months, Reyna started the last four matches before the winter break and received mixed reviews. He has yet to record a goal or assist this season.
Advertisement
Noahkai Banks, FC Augsburg
Though he has never played for the U.S. team, the 19-year-old center back remains an intriguing character as the World Cup approaches. The Hawaiian-born German American received his first senior call-up in September but did not get into either friendly. Having started almost every game since early October for Augsburg in the Bundesliga, Banks shouldn’t be overlooked.
Pochettino’s center back corps is not set in stone. He has used Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards, Charlotte’s Tim Ream, Cincinnati’s Miles Robinson, Toulouse’s Mark McKenzie and Celtic’s Auston Trusty. (Toronto FC’s Walker Zimmerman and Vancouver’s Tristan Blackmon are also in the pool, and Celtic’s Cameron Carter-Vickers is recovering from an Achilles’ tendon injury.)
Johnny Cardoso, Atlético Madrid
If relying solely on his club portfolio, the 24-year-old center midfielder should be a U.S. regular. In the past two years, he has moved from Brazil’s Internacional to Spain’s Real Betis and attracted interest from England’s Tottenham Hotspur before leaping to Atlético Madrid last summer on a $35 million transfer.
Advertisement
But injuries have hampered his ascent and, oddly, he has never played very well for the national team. His most recent appearances, in the June friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland, were forgettable. Regular assignments with Atlético might earn him one last chance with Pochettino.
Patrick Agyemang, Derby County
The 6-foot-4 Connecticut native took a bit of risk last summer by leaving a certain role in MLS for the uncertainties of the English Championship. Had he sat on Derby County’s bench, Agyemang would have lost all World Cup hope.
But he has adapted well, recording six goals and three assists in 19 starts, including a two-goal effort against Sheffield Wednesday last month. A good run over the next two months would keep him in contention for a March call-up.
Advertisement
Alex Zendejas, Club América
The only Liga MX candidate under serious consideration, the clever, Mexican-born winger has been terrific for Club América and shown flashes of brilliance for the national team. His volleyed goal against Japan in September was all class. However, he withdrew from the October camp with a knee injury and wasn’t called up a month later.
Luca de la Torre, Charlotte F.C.
Reduced playing time in San Diego last season damaged his U.S. standing, but with a move to Charlotte this offseason, the 27-year-old central midfielder with 32 caps could reenter the conversation. Like most MLS players, though, he will not have much time to make his case: The regular season doesn’t start until Feb. 21.
Advertisement
Yunus Musah, Atalanta
Once a mainstay in the U.S. lineup – 47 caps before he turned 23 – the versatile Musah has faded from the scene since the Nations League finals last March. After joining Atalanta on loan from AC Milan in Serie A this season, he has been used almost exclusively as a sub. His minutes have picked up recently, hinting at a larger role down the stretch.
Josh Sargent, Norwich City
While Pochettino and U.S. fans have all but given up on the Norwich City striker, there is always that possibility Sargent goes on a crazy scoring surge. After all, he has scored 52 goals the past 3 ½ years in England’s second division. Even if he did go wild, though, there is little faith in a U.S. uniform: He hasn’t scored for his country since November 2019.
Advertisement
Damion Downs, Hamburg
Sometimes a change of scenery does wonders, and in the case of this 6-foot-4, 21-year-old striker with six caps, this week’s move to Hamburg on loan from Southampton could do the trick. He started once in the English Championship and hadn’t played since Nov. 25.
However, the situation in Venezuela does have baseball implications, so on Tuesday, Jordan Shusterman and FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen discussed how the U.S.-Venezuela conflict is affecting MLB teams, players, coaches and scouts in a country that is a significant source of major-league talent.
Advertisement
“There’s a lot of elements to this that are both interesting and harrowing and concerning,” Shusterman said. “And the reality is I think we’re going to ask more questions than anything in this conversation, but it’s something that we wanted to have space to do.”
The most pressing concern is, of course, the safety of individuals in Venezuela. Some current big leaguers, including Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio, are in their native country for the winter or to play in the Venezuelan winter league. Some teams have international scouts and other staff in the country. Last but not least, there are many amateur prospects in Venezuela, some of whom are slated to sign pro contracts when the window to do so opens Jan. 15.
According to Longenhagen, FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst, MLB teams have been aware for some time of the crisis in Venezuela and the potential need to remove individuals from the country.
Advertisement
“Even around winter meetings … there was already smoke and anticipation among some of my sources that this was a volatile situation, that they might have to extract their young employees from Venezuela in a rushed, potentially harrowing fashion, depending on how things transpired with our government and theirs,” Longenhagen said.
“There were some teams who anticipated this and were already dealing with a lot of the red tape that goes into immigration and work visas and … the logistics of getting Venezuelan players from there to the United States or … the Dominican Republic.”
It’s worth noting that some of the safety concerns and immigration hurdles in Venezuela are not new or unique to the current events, though the situation is considered much more dire now. For example, prior to 2015, there was a Venezuelan summer league, and more MLB teams had a presence in the country, but that has declined over the past decade as the situation has worsened.
“Venezuelan players often showcase in Colombia as a result of how difficult it is to get personnel from the United States in and out of Venezuela,” Longenhagen said.
Advertisement
“There’s already been a gradual exodus in terms of a permanent presence because the reality is it’s just not safe,” Shusterman said. “But that hasn’t stopped a lot of really promising and important Venezuelan players from signing, making it to the big leagues, becoming superstars, becoming faces of our sport.”
Varying responses among MLB teams
Longenhagen said some teams are more prepared than others to handle this situation and take care of their personnel in Venezuela.
“It runs the gamut right now, how prepared any given individual team is for this,” Longenhagen said. “And I think the fact that it seems to be on each individual team at this moment to try to maneuver and navigate the situation is potentially concerning.”
The international signing period — in which amateurs from predominantly Latin American countries, including Venezuela, sign their first pro contracts — begins Jan. 15. In the cases of some teams, the prospects who are going to sign next week are already in the Dominican Republic or the United States at a team’s complex. In other cases, those amateur players are still in Venezuela and could face difficulty leaving.
The U.S. imposed temporary flight restrictions in the Caribbean on Saturday, the day of the military operation. Since 2019, the United States has suspended direct flights to and from Venezuela.
Impact on international tournaments
The Venezuelan winter league is in the midst of its season right now. Games were paused for four days over the weekend but resumed Wednesday. Chourio — who hit an extra-innings home run for his team, Aguilas del Zulia, on Friday in its playoff opener — is among the current MLB players competing this winter. Mets infielder Luisangel Acuña is another. Notably, the winter league teams that are based in Caracas, the nation’s capital, were already eliminated.
Advertisement
Typically, following the conclusion of the winter leagues in the Dominican, Venezuela and Mexico, there is a Caribbean Series tournament featuring the champions of those leagues. That tournament was supposed to be held in Venezuela this year but will now be held in Mexico instead, and Venezuela will not participate.
“My understanding is that the Venezuelan league has decided, ‘We’re not sending anybody. You can’t go to this other league that took the tournament out of our country,’” Shusterman said.
What about the World Baseball Classic? The international tournament begins March 5, and the Venezuelan team is set to compete in a group along with the Dominican Republic, Israel, the Netherlands and Nicaragua, with games held in Miami. As of now, Venezuela is still expected to participate, but the situation remains fluid.
“The reality is we are talking about the safety of players that are people, first and foremost,” Shusterman said. “All of this is way bigger than baseball.”
