Dodgers International Director Ismael Cruz: Baseball America’s 2024 Tony Gwynn Award Winner

Image credit: Ismael Cruz (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Ismael Cruz began scouting before he even realized he was scouting.

His earliest childhood memories are of tagging along with his father Pablo to baseball fields in the Dominican Republic or to Estadio Olimpico in Santo Domingo to watch the players his father had signed for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Ismael Cruz vividly remembers his father bringing young Pirates players such as Tony Peña to eat dinner. The prospects would eat dinner at the Cruzes’ home, and then Pablo would invite Ismael to the table to eat his dinner.

“I wouldn’t eat until the players ate,” Ismael Cruz said. “They would eat before me.”

The lesson was to treat the players like family and to nurture them on and off the field. Pablo Cruz recently retired after nearly 50 years as a scout, though he still works as a hitting consultant for the Dominican Republic’s youth national teams. The elder Cruz signed more than 20 players who reached the major leagues. He also mentored a young international scout named Omar Minaya, who eventually became the first Latino general manager in Major League Baseball history.

Ismael Cruz, 55, the Dodgers’ vice president of international scouting, has worked as a scout or scouting director for most of the last 30 years. He also served as a manager in the Dominican Summer League for one year and as a baseball agent for three years during that span.

Cruz has spent the last nine seasons with the 2024 World Series champion Dodgers. In the summer before joining the Dodgers, he signed a kid named Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the Blue Jays. A few months later, he signed a 19-year-old Cuban slugger by the name of Yordan Alvarez for the Dodgers.

“Ismael comes from scouting royalty, not only in the Dominican Republic, but in Latin America,” said Minaya, who hired Ismael Cruz as the Montreal Expos’ scouting director in 2002. “He’s one of the best international scouts out there, but a lot of it has to do with the foundation he got from his father.

“He had the Pirates’ lessons. His father knew Roberto Clemente and those kinds of guys. Ismael has been not only a good father, but a very successful baseball person, especially as a scout.”

To be clear, Ismael is hesitant to say he signed Guerrero or Alvarez. He likes to say that his staff signed them.

“I signed the bad ones,” he said. “My scouts signed the good ones.”

Cruz also notes that his bosses deserve credit for helping him sign Guerrero and Alvarez, because signings like those need to be approved from above to meet the bonus requirements.

Whatever the case, Ismael Cruz has been one of the best international scouts of his generation. At least one player he signed has reached the majors for each of the last 15 seasons in a row. Those signings span deals he made working for the Expos, Mets, Blue Jays and Dodgers.

Righthander Jenrry Mejia and shortstop Ruben Tejada began the streak on April 7, 2010, with the Mets. Righthander Edgardo Henriquez of the Dodgers became his latest big leaguer when he debuted on Sept. 24.

For his decades-long contributions to baseball, Cruz is this year’s recipient of the Tony Gwynn Award, the Baseball America version of a lifetime achievement award.

Cruz has signed most of his players out of the Dominican Republic. But he has signed multiple big leaguers from Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela. He also uncovered eventual big leaguers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Mexico and Panama. He signed one player from Germany who reached Triple-A. Cruz also signed the first player out of Belgium to turn professional.

Two of the top six finishers in the 2019 American League Rookie of the Year race were signed by Cruz: Alvarez, the award winner; and Guerrero, a four-time all-star who finished sixth that season.

Ismael Cruz was born and raised in Santo Domingo. He left the Dominican Republic after high school to play baseball at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was drafted in the 20th round in 1989 by the Phillies after his junior year.

He played two seasons in the minor leagues, topping out as a second baseman at short-season before ending his playing career to join his college sweetheart Peggy in her native Colombia. That’s where he began his scouting career on a part-time basis with the Pirates.

He also returned to Eckerd to finish his degree. Since beginning as a part-time scout in Colombia in 1994, Cruz has scouted players on nearly every continent. He spent three years as a player agent from 1998 to 2001 before managing the Padres’ DSL affiliate in 2001. A year later, Minaya hired him with the Expos.

Cruz said he has scouted in every country where baseball is played. He has been fortunate to spend the last nine years with the big-market Dodgers. He also had a stint with the big-market Mets.

Cruz has also been on the opposite spectrum, though. He got his first chance to run an international scouting department in 2002 with the Expos. MLB had just taken over the Expos and hired Minaya as GM.

Cruz was one of Minaya’s first hires. The title of international scouting director was impressive. The international scouting budget MLB gave Minaya was not.

“We didn’t have an academy,” recalls Astros GM Dana Brown, who worked with the Expos at the time. “We had a workout near a small pond where people bathed. Crazy!”

Minaya gave Cruz a $100,000 budget to run the Expos’ entire international department that year. Moreover, there was no money to sign players.

Cruz signed players for no bonus that year, including a pair of players he found in Argentina. Unsurprisingly, no player reached the majors from his crop of players who signed for no bonus.

“That’s when Major League Baseball took control,” Cruz said. “We didn’t have money. I spent three years with zero dollars. I had to sign players for free to maintain the Dominican operation. Omar said, ‘You have $100,000 for food, transportation and to manage the entire department.’

“That helped me learn. Then after that he gave me $50,000 to spend on signings. We got two or three major leaguers.”

Cruz credits his time with the Expos with helping him grow as a scout and scouting director. Minaya became the Mets’ GM after the 2004 season. He brought Cruz over to Queens to serve as the Mets’ international scouting director.

That’s when Cruz finally had a full international scouting staff and a Dominican complex. The Mets reached the World Series in 2015, long after Minaya had been fired and Cruz had joined the Blue Jays. Still, five of the players Cruz signed with the Mets played in the 2015 World Series, four for the Mets and one for the Royals.

Cruz, Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos, Brown and Angels general manager Perry Minasian were among the talented folks Minaya hired with the Expos.

Anthopoulos hired Cruz away from the Mets in 2011 and named him a special assistant and international scouting director.

Cruz said there was a padrino, or godfather, for him at the Expos, Mets and Blue Jays when he joined those organizations. The Dodgers were a different situation entirely.

He had no ties to Dodgers president Andrew Friedman when he was lured to Los Angeles. He was one of five candidates Friedman interviewed for the role before picking Cruz.

“Since we brought Ismael to the Dodgers in 2015, he has been a steady hand driving our process of scouting and signing amateur international players,” Friedman said.

“In an area of the game where relationship building through trust and consistency is so important, I can’t think of anyone who has a better track record of doing that than Ish. His leadership has put us in a position to access the top talent around the world, not just in Latin America.

“For someone with as much experience as he has, I have a ton of respect for his openness to learning and improving, which allows us as an organization to keep progressing.”

Now, Cruz has his own little family scouting tree of sorts. His son Jonathan Cruz is the Braves’ Latin American scouting director for Anthopoulos. His other son Brian Cruz was an assistant director for Minasian with the Angels, but he recently left that post.

Ismael Cruz’s international scouting protégés can be found scouring ballfields for the next wave of talent. Gustavo Cabrera, who is the Orioles’ Latin American scouting director, worked for Cruz with the Mets. Blue Jays Latin American operations director Sandy Rosario worked for Cruz with the Expos, Mets and Blue Jays.

Roman Barinas, the Twins’ Latin American scouting director, and Brian Parker, the Angels’ international scouting director, also worked for Cruz.

Cruz credits his father with preparing him. He also credits Minaya with giving him his first opportunity to run a department. Cruz was managing in the DSL when Minaya hired him away from the Expos in 2002.

Along the way, Ismael Cruz has built strong bonds with his colleagues. Brown, who just finished his second season at the helm in Houston, calls Cruz his “primo,” which means cousin in Spanish.

“I love Ismael like a brother,” Brown said. “He is certainly my primo.”

International scouting is definitely the family business for the Cruzes. Pablo signed at least 29 players during his career. Five-time all-star catcher Tony Peña, three-time all-star third baseman Aramis Ramirez and all-star righthander Pascual Perez are among the big leaguers Pablo Cruz signed.

Ismael Cruz eventually signed Tony Peña’s son Francisco for the Mets. Cruz has signed 49 players who reached the majors. His son Jonathan is 31 and just starting his path. Two of the prospects he has signed have reached the majors.

After brief stints as a part-time scout for the Blue Jays after playing college baseball in Canada, Jonathan joined the Braves in 2015 as an area scout. He was promoted to international scouting director in 2020.

Ismael Cruz and his wife Peggy have three children, Brian and twins Anthony and Jonathan. Anthony is the only one of the Cruz men who has made his life outside of baseball.

“It’s all I know basically,” Jonathan Cruz said. “It’s been an example since I was a little kid. I learned the integrity behind the work, which I think is one of the most important things on this side of baseball.

“I would say one thing that I learned that stands out besides the success, it would be integrity and doing things the right way. It helps me in my career and my way of life as well. It proves you can have good success doing things the right way.”

Ismael Cruz has done it the right way for three decades, proving again and again that he’s one of the best talent evaluators in the business.