With the United States’ arrest of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro last week, thoughts shifted to various aspects of daily life in the country. For one, two Venezuelan Winter League playoff games on Saturday in Valencia were postponed to Wednesday, and two more Sunday games were postponed to this Thursday.
Dodgers reliever Edgardo Henriquez and top-100 prospect Eduardo Quintero — the outfielder who was the organization’s Branch Rickey Award winner in 2025 as minor league player of the year — both
played for Tiburones de La Guaira during the season. When they might be able to come stateside, with spring training camps about five weeks away, remains to be seen with travel in and out of Venezuela impacted by last week’s regime change.
Bill Plunkett for the Orange County Register talked with Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes about Dodgers players who might be impacted by this:
“I don’t really care about the baseball side of it right now. I just want to make sure our guys are in a good place and we’re trying to help out where we can,” Gomes said.
“Everybody is in a good place right now seemingly. It’s a little slower than anybody would like. Our goal is to stay in contact with them and do whatever we can to help them get out as soon as we can.”
The 2026 international signing period opens in only nine days, on January 15. The Dodgers have a total bonus pool of $6,679,200, which is in the lower half of MLB teams but not in the lowest tier of bonus pools. Three teams have a bonus pool of $5.94 million, and four more have $5.44 million to spend.
Ben Badler at Baseball America on Monday unveiled the top 50 international prospects and where they are expected to sign. The lone projected Dodgers signee among the group is Rubel Arias, a 17-year-old outfielder out of the Dominican Republic.
Old friend Don Mattingly, who managed the Dodgers for five seasons (2011-2015) preceding Dave Roberts, and who was most recently the bench coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, was officially hired Monday as the Phillies bench coach. There’s an extra Dodgers twist to this story, as Don Mattingly was hired by his son Preston Mattingly, who is currently the Phillies general manager and was once drafted by the Dodgers in the first round in 2006.
