The Cuban baseball league system is not a single baseball league; rather it is a structure of leagues and series that are governed by the Baseball Federation of Cuba and culminate in national championships and the selection of the Cuba national baseball team. The players are amateurs and play for the provinces in which they reside. All of the provinces in Cuba are represented by teams. read more Wikipedia
From the Economist After Fidel Castro took power and became the island’s baseball-fan-in-chief, the sport’s tacit political role became explicit. He proclaimed athletes to be “standard-bearers of the revolution playing for the love of the people, not money”. He banned professional sports and founded the National Series, a wildly popular amateur league in which each province fielded a team of players from its territory. He also established a formidable player-development system, with scouts identifying talented children and academies to train them once they became teenagers.
But setting so much store by its baseball players left the government vulnerable to shifting geopolitics. In 1991 René Arocha, a pitcher in the national team, walked out of his hotel room during a tournament in Miami, made his way to his aunt’s house, and never returned, making him the first team member to defect in history.
The government responded to early defections with stoicism. “When one leaves, another ten better players emerge,” Fidel Castro once said. But in the past few years, the trickle of defections has become a torrent. As recently as 2007 there were just ten Cubans in MLB. Today there are 27. read more
Video contains interview with Industriales Manager, Lazaro Vargas, Feb 2015
From Wikipedia Players attempting to play in MLB often choose not to defect to the United States, because establishing residency in the United States means they must enter the MLB Draft. If they defect to another nation, they can become free agents, allowing them to choose their offer. The largest contract given to a Cuban defector is outfielder Rusney Castillo's seven-year contract with the Boston Red Sox, signed in 2014, worth $72.5 million. First basemanJosé Dariel Abreu signed a six-year contract worth $68 million with the Chicago White Sox in 2013. The largest contract given to a pitcher was the $32 million the New York Yankees gave to José Contreras in 2002, while the Cincinnati Reds signed Aroldis Chapman for $30.25 million in 2010.