The president of the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation, Juan Reinaldo Pérez Pardo, told journalist Carlos Luján, on the television program Bola Viva, that in the month of September there will again be a series of tryouts in hosted in Cuba for Asian professional baseball teams. The logistics will be different for these showcases, they will first be carried out in different areas of the country (east-center-west), during consecutive weekends and then a final tryout in the Latinoamericano stadium.
The first three weekends (one in each zone) will function as a kind of eliminatory, with the presence of under-15, under-18 talents and the best senior players. In Havana it will be on September 28 and 29. It is expected that there will be between 40 and 60 athletes, who will be training with the Cuban team that will be training for the Premier 12, with whom they could play exhibition-preparation games.
The Cuban Baseball Federation wants this event simulate sports-cultural ‘show’ and they have already communicated the idea to Cuban Television to broadcast several of these tests. In September 2023, scouts from the Yomiuri Giants of the Korean Professional Baseball League (KBO), a couple of scouts also from the Lotte Giants (Korea), WBSC representatives Takayuki Yahiro and Kent Hayashi also showed up.
Pérez Pardo recently visited Korea and spoke with directors of the KBO about future endeavors and collaborations between both bodies. No Cuban represented by the FCB has ever been signed by the Korean circuit, Cuba is hoping to reverse that trend. Guillermo Heredia and Roenis Elías are the only Cuban players seeing action in the circuit this year with the SSG Landers for the second consecutive year.