New Baseball Regulations Impose Greater Oversight of Academies, Contracts, and Youth Development

The government has approved a new oversight framework for professional and recreational baseball in the Dominican Republic, an effort to bring order to an activity that spans everything from large organizations and academies to independent coaches, agents, and individuals who develop prospects on their own.

The measure comes in Decree No. 601-26, dated August 26, 2026, which approves the Regulations for the Supervision of Professional and Recreational Baseball and of Academies, Leagues, and Development Programs.

The regulations set new rules for registering, supervising, and protecting athletes, with particular emphasis on minors, and bring much of the training, recruitment, representation, and player-development sector under formal supervision.

Enforcement falls to the National Baseball Commissioner's Office, a functionally decentralized body of the Ministry of Sports and Recreation.

A Registry of Who Operates in the System

The central change is the creation of the National Baseball System Registry, through which authorities will register, certify, verify, and monitor everyone active in the sport.

The registry will cover leagues, teams, players, academies, agencies, representatives, coaches, umpires, scouts, and other participants.

Registrants must keep their information current with the competent authority. The registry does not, however, replace licenses or authorizations required by other institutions.

In practice, the aim is traceability: knowing who takes part in the business and development of baseball, particularly in sensitive areas such as scouting and training prospects.

What Will Happen to Independent Coaches?

The regulations introduce coach certification and tighter controls over training and player-development activities.

That could bear directly on coaches who work independently, outside established academies and organizations, a common arrangement in communities across the country.

The regulations set criteria for staff qualifications, training programs, and the safety conditions under which activities take place.

How those requirements will be applied in practice is still unclear, as is the procedure for bringing into the system those who have long operated outside formal structures.

Protection of Minors

A pillar of the new framework is stronger protection for the minors involved in baseball.

The regulations require authorization from parents, guardians, or legal representatives for certain activities, and impose a duty to prevent abuse, exploitation, harassment, discrimination, neglect, overtraining, and school dropout.

They also require that sports activities not harm the education, health, rest, or overall development of children and adolescents.

Recruiting and evaluating prospects must be done transparently, free of deceptive or abusive practices.

That provision carries weight in a country where thousands of young people enter training programs early, hoping for a shot at professional baseball.

Contracts and Transfers

On the professional side, the Directorate of the National Baseball Commissioner will oversee the registration of players and teams, along with transfers and the filing of contracts.

The regulations set minimum conditions for contractual protection, transparency, and informed consent.

The mechanism gives the authority greater capacity to monitor contractual relationships within the system.

The specific procedures for receiving, reviewing, and checking documents, however, still have to be defined as the regulations are applied.

Inspections, Complaints, and Preventive Measures

The framework also empowers the Directorate to conduct inspections, receive complaints and reports, and require corrective action where it finds non-compliance.

Where there is a serious or imminent risk to the health, safety, or rights of participants, it may adopt preventive administrative measures.

The regulations also stipulate that these actions must respect the principles of legality, proportionality, due process, and the right to a defense.