According to Baseball America, the academies in the Dominican Republic will be allowed to open up on October 19th for their version of the Fall Instructional League. That’s good news for the players who have signed since last July, but have yet to play an official game yet. Some of those players are at Pirate City for the fall league currently, but a large group of players will be able to play games against opposing teams for the first time since last fall.
The Pirates were one of the few teams that didn’t play against other teams last summer in the Tricky League, so they may not choose to participate in games against other teams this fall. The Tricky League is set up to allow July 2nd signings a chance to play against other teams. With a very large signing class this year and some leftover players from previous DSL seasons, the Pirates will have enough players for two teams, making it possible to only play an intersquad schedule.
BA notes that the main difference this year is that unsigned players can not participate in camp. Since most teams verbally agree to deals 1-2 years in advance, they were previously allowed to bring players in for a short time and get them some game experience against other young players. Scouting will also be limited to only teams that you are playing and only during that specific game, so if the Pirates choose to play only Pirates vs Pirates games, they won’t be allowed to scout any other teams this fall.
