This country currently has three jewels in the main payrolls of Major League Baseball

Since the retirement of Everth Cabrera, in 2015, the country was left without its most illustrious representative of recent times. Behind him, there was only one player in the big leagues – Erasmo Ramírez – and the other two had made only their first sporadic appearances.

Erasmo has been at first level since 2012, and has only played in the Seattle Mariners and the Tampa Rays, where he was between 2015 and 2017, before returning to the Northwest of the United States. Although the current season did not start well, his career certificates him, with a record of 30 wins, 36 defeats, and an accumulated 4.24 ERA. Furthermore, the WHIP of 1.24 makes him a top-level reliever in MLB.

Leer en español: Nicaragua: El grande exponente del beisbol en Centroamérica

Then, there is the 'Piri' Cheslor Cuthbert, the youngest of the three and the only one who is the infielder. He serves as the third baseman in the 2014 baseball champions, the Kansas City Royals. There he backs one of the best in the position, the powerful Mike Moustakas, who is not at all far in terms of percentage of fielding, with .949 of effectiveness. Of course, a little further is at an offensive level, with a cumulative average of .259.

The last of them is Los Angeles Angels reliever, Juan Carlos Ramírez, or JC Ramírez. Also known as 'Cubanito', born in the Nicaraguan capital in 1988, is perhaps the player with the best projection in the MLB for a title, sharing squad with great elements like the Dominican Albert Pujols, the outfielder Mike Trout and the newcomer Shohei Ohtani. The latter is one of the potential figures of sport for the future.

The ambition of the Anaheim team championship has been enhanced with the arrival of the Japanese, which JC could endorse in some of his outings eventually. Currently, they are second in the Eastern Division of the American League, very close to the current leaders and champions, the Astros of Houston, and with the Mariners of Erasmus a little further behind. In postseason, they are not listed since 2014, when they were eliminated by the subsequent champions, and on the contrary have seen much figuration in their regional rivals, the Dodgers, which are even the current runners-up.

A near future

In the World Classic, the same one that Nicaragua has already hosted and runner-up five times, respectively, Nicaragua did not appear recently. The last time was a game of power to play the event of 2017 in the United States, but the squad was able to improve and make a better paper in the future, approaching until the last instance despite not having any of the three players in first level.

In the minors leagues, there are prospects that could equal or surpass the record of four Nicaraguans in the Major Leagues in the same season, something that has only happened in five years, the last one being in 2015. That year, Cabrera played his last season as a professional.

Looking ahead, the most prominent of the young is the right starter Jonathan Loáisiga, who at 23 is the brightest prospect in the country in the big tent. The one from Managua arrived at the hotbeds of the New York Yankees at the beginning of 2016, but began to stand out in 2017.

This is the number 24 prospect on the list of 'Bronx Bombers', thanks to its lines that already reach 96 and occasionally 98 miles per hour. "Although he is small and skinny, he has surprising power in his repertoire of three pitches," says his official follow-up report, which also highlights his ability to stay in the strike zone, give few tickets and his half-man profile of rotation.

All this earned him being added to the list of 40 'bigleaguers' of the Yankees last November, where he remains to this day waiting for an opportunity to make his debut at the highest level.

Latin American Post | Miguel Andrés Galvis
Translated from “ Nicaragua: El grande exponente del beisbol en Centroamérica”