{"id":664451,"date":"2026-04-05T11:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664451\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T11:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:42:16","slug":"the-colorado-rockies-might-have-a-hidden-gem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664451\/","title":{"rendered":"The Colorado Rockies Might Have a Hidden Gem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eriel Dihigo<\/a> is an infielder in the Colorado Rockies farm system who has posted intriguing numbers across two seasons in the Dominican Summer League. He was signed by Colorado during the 2024 signing period for international amateur prospects and was the recipient of a 500,000 dollar signing bonus. Scouting the slash line is a fool\u2019s errand because odds are Dihigo never even records a single plate appearance while wearing a MLB uniform, but a sparkling BB\/K ratio is a huge green flag for future success. If Dihigo\u2019s last name rings bell, then it should because the 19-year-old third baseman is a descendant of the legendary Afro-Cuban player-manager Mart\u00edn Dihigo<\/a>. The elder Dihigo was a giant of Pre-Integration Baseball who dominated the Negro Leagues and Latin American Winter Leagues from 1923 to 1942. Whenever I attempt to explain Dihigo\u2019s massive array of impressive skills to people who are not aware, I tell folks to imagine if there was an Ohtani-level two-way player who was able to play every defensive position on the field at an above-average level while being the manager of the team he played for. Eriel will probably start the 2026 MiLB season in the Arizona Complex League with a chance to be pushed to Low-A if everything goes right. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The fact that there is a member of the Dihigo family in the realms of professional baseball more than 100 years after Mart\u00edn\u2019s debut is a testament to the quality of baseball players who hail from Cuba and yet another affirmation of the island\u2019s return to prominence after persisting through a nadir during most of the 21st century. Similarly to Mart\u00edn, Eriel was raised in Matanzas, one of Cuba\u2019s westernmost provinces. Known as Ay\u00e1 \u00c1ta in the Afro-Cuban Lukum\u00ed dialect(sometimes spelled as Lucum\u00ed)[1]<\/a>, almost 25% of the Matanzas Province\u2019s total population identifies as Black.[2]<\/a> As one of the epicenters of Afro-Cuban culture and identity across the entire island, the heavy influence and retention of West African languages, music, cultural practices, and social etiquette throughout Matanzas has been well documented by various historians such as Ivor Miller, Lydia Cabrera, and Fernando Ort\u00edz.[3]<\/a>[4]<\/a>[5]<\/a>[6]<\/a> Matanzas is also famous for being one of the epicenters of Afro-Cuban resistance to slavery\/colonialism.[7]<\/a>[8]<\/a>[9]<\/a> <\/p>\n

The Red Black Green Baseball Blog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n

Despite their rich and well documented history, Afro-Descendants from Cuba are one of the most flattened demographics in professional baseball. I\u2019ve had people question whether Afro-Cubans in MiLB and MLB would be willing to have conversations with me about Blackness on record even though Cuba has at least three provinces (Guantanamo, Granma, Santiago) where more than half of the population self-identifies as Black and a plethora of municipalities with substantial amounts of self-identifying Black people. I am curious about how Eriel Dihigo will be perceived if he winds up finding any sort of relevance in MiLB\/MLB during his playing days considering his ancestor\u2019s prominence in the Negro Leagues and the regularity of Afro-Cubans in the Negro Leagues. Individuals of African descent from Cuba have a long history of claiming their Blackness inside and outside baseball, especially when considering the close ties they had to African-Americans during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.[10]<\/a>[11]<\/a>[12]<\/a>[13]<\/a> It will be interesting to see whether the continued success of active Afro-Cubans within professional baseball leads to more visibility for Afro-Cubans across the world. <\/p>\n

[1] https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/anago0000unse<\/a><\/p>\n

[2] https:\/\/www.citypopulation.de\/en\/cuba\/admin\/25__matanzas\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[3] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/343234<\/a><\/p>\n

[4] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/4006814<\/a><\/p>\n

[5] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41850392<\/a><\/p>\n

[6] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/44797204<\/a><\/p>\n

[7] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/23392570<\/a><\/p>\n

[8] https:\/\/searchworks.stanford.edu\/view\/7792406<\/a><\/p>\n

[9] https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/271642645_The_Great_African_Slave_Revolt_of_1825_Cuba_and_the_Fight_for_Freedom_in_Matanzas<\/a><\/p>\n

[10] https:\/\/uncpress.org\/9780807871034\/forging-diaspora\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[11] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2904254<\/a><\/p>\n

[12] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24713753<\/a><\/p>\n

[13] https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/27180576<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eriel Dihigo is an infielder in the Colorado Rockies farm system who has posted intriguing numbers across two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2405],"tags":[5,167,52,4316,4,168],"class_list":{"0":"post-664451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-rockies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-rockies","11":"tag-coloradorockies","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-rockies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}