The Dominican Summer League opens its season tonight.  So, here's a little information about the Dominican Summer League.

There are five divisions:  North, South, Northwest, San Pedro, and Baseball City.  Each division has eight teams.  If you do the math, that means there are more teams in the DSL than there are in the major leagues.   That, in turn, means that there are some major league teams that have more than one team in the league.

The teams take on the name of their parent club (the DSL Twins, the DSL Indians, the DSL White Sox, etc.).  For the most part, these differences are noted by numbers, such as the DSL Dodgers1 and the DSL Dodgers2.  There are exceptions to this.  A couple of teams differentiate their teams by colors:  the DSL Phillies Red and the DSL Phillies White; the DSL Astros Orange and the DSL Astros Blue.  The Reds designate their teams the DSL Reds and the DSL Rojos.  There is also one composite team, the DSL Indians/Brewers.

I'm not sure about this, but looking quickly at the schedule, it appears that the teams only play games within their division.  It's a seventy-two game schedule, playing every day except Sunday and the day before the all-star game.  The Twins, who only have one team, play in the South division.  Other teams in that division are the Angels, the Cardinals, the Mets1, the Nationals, the Phillies Red, the Rockies, and the Yankees.

There are some special rules.  Each team can have thirty-five players active and in uniform.  No player on the active list may have four or more years of prior minor league service. In addition, no draft-eligible player from the U.S. or Canada (not including players from Puerto Rico) may participate in the Dominican Summer League.  I seem to recall an age limit at one time, but if so that rule has now been eliminated.  They have playoffs, but I could not quickly find out how many teams qualify or what the procedures are.

The roster at milb.com does not list a manager.  I don't know if that's a mistake at milb.com or if they're going with a "college of coaches" approach or something.  And no, this does not seem to be a common approach in the DSL, as all the other teams in the Twins' division list a manager.  The roster does list a pitching coach and four (!) batting coaches.  The pitching coach is Manny Santana.  The batting coaches are Jimmy Alvarez, Leury Bonilla, Ed Estrada, and Jairo Rodriguez.

I've never actually seen a DSL game, but judging from the box scores the quality of play is not that good.  The players are all young and athletic, but very raw.  It's generally a speed game rather than a power game.  There are plenty of walks and plenty of errors.  It's a league that's much more about player development than about wins and losses.  Still, it's baseball, and it's fun, so we'll cover it.  Hope you enjoy the season.