So, Yoan Alcantara has possibly lied about who he actually is. I'm trying to figure out if this is really a problem and if it is, what needs to be done about it.
The big negative about this sort of thing is that it's a way for people to enter the country under a fake identity, which is bad, because if you lie about your name and age, you're probably a terrorist, according to internet news site comment sections. I guess the thinking goes, If this person isn't really named Yoan Alcantara, 16 year old, but actually Marcial Castillo, 19 year old, then he could be ANYBODY.
So that's bad, but it seems to me that there should be some higher authority than the MLB's International Investigation unit figuring things out then.
So the next bad thing is that the Padres are investing money in 16 year olds, expecting them to burn out at 29 and figuring that, at 16, you have 13 years to burn out instead of 10 years to burn out if you were 19.
I'm just joking.
The thinking actually is that if you're 16 and you're as strong as a 19 year old, then, by the time you're 19, you'll be as strong as a 25 year old. By the time you're 30, you'll be as strong as like a 43 year old dude. And then when you're 50, you'll have the strength of 100 years under your belt.
But let's face it. As long as Major League Baseball considers players to be "in decline" after age 27, it will always behoove players to claim to be younger than they are just to hold off the eventual countdown to when you are no longer relevant. It just happens that it's easier to lie about this stuff in other countries than it is in the US.