The season starts today!

The Dominican Summer League is kind of a strange creature.   The teams are based in the Dominican Republic.  Each team plays seventy-two games.  Each team is allowed to have thirty-five players active and in uniform for each game.  No player may have four or more prior years of minor league service.  No draft-eligible player from the United States or Canada (other than Puerto Rico) can play.

There are five divisions, with no attempt made to equalize them.  There are ten teams in the Boca Chica North, ten in the Boca Chica South, six in the Boca Chica Northwest, six in the Boca Chica Baseball City, and four in the San Pedro de Macoris.  There are playoffs, but I was unable to find out how many teams qualify or what the procedures are.  Perhaps this will become clear as the season progresses.

Teams do not have individual nicknames of their own, but take the names of their parent club, e.g. DSL Twins, DSL Dodgers, etc.  A few teams have two entries in the league.  Usually these entries are differentiated by a number, e.g. DSL Yankees1 and DSL Yankees2.  However, the Astros teams seem to be differentiated by color (DSL Astros Orange and DSL Astros Blue.

The DSL Twins play in the Boca Chica Baseball City division.  They are managed by Jimmy Alvarez.  Coaches are Ramon Nivar and pitching coach Manny Santana.

There's really no point in going through the rosters, because there are no players whose names we'll recognize unless we happen to remember them from last year.  I had thought perhaps there would be some managers and coaches whose names were recognizable, but that does not seem to be the case, either.

The level of play is pretty uneven.  I have always suspected that watching a DSL game would be sort of like watching a good-but-not great high school game.  There are lots of good athletes, but also plenty of mistakes, especially walks and errors.

Still, it's baseball, it has a Twins connection, and it starts today, so we'll have some fun keeping track of it.  Go DSL Twins!