TONY GWYNN AWARD ISMAEL CRUZ

In his four decades in the game, Dodgers international director Ismael Cruz has done things the right way. His legacy lives on not only via scouts in his family, but also the myriad protégés in key roles in the industry.

- JOSE DE JESUS ORTIZ

I smael 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.