No more home games

Leaving home wasn’t as simple as Aroldis Chapman had hoped.

“It was very difficult,” the pitcher confessed last month, half a year after walking away from Cuba’s national team and defecting in the Netherlands. “I had to leave my friends, my family. Everything.”

Including a baby daughter he has never met.

“But when I made the decision,” he continued in Spanish, “like they say, you have to be brave.”

He didn’t come alone. The last two years have seen the largest exodus of Cuban baseball talent since Fidel Castro took power half a century ago, with more than 40 players defecting.

Chapman, a precocious left-hander whose fastball has been clocked at 102 mph, was considered the best prospect in the bunch. Only 22, he was signed in January by the Cincinnati Reds for six years and $30.25 million, the second-richest contract ever awarded to a Cuban defector.

And he isn’t the only new millionaire. Shortstop Adeiny Hechevarria signed a four-year, $10-million deal with Toronto; shortstop Jose Iglesias got $8.25 million over four years from Boston; pitcher Noel Arguelles reached a five-year, $6.9-million deal with Kansas City; and infielder Leslie Anderson received $3.75 million over four years from Tampa Bay.

Expect the list to grow too, with top players such as pitching star Yunesky Maya, first baseman Jose Julio Ruiz and hard-throwing right-hander Reinier Roibal likely to sign within the next few weeks.

The biggest group, though, is scattered from Miami to Mexico and around the Dominican Republic -- about three dozen ballplayers who defected in pursuit of a major league deal that might never come.

“It’s an incredible number out there. And their migration has a lot to do with their countrymen and teammates leaving and having success,” said Bart Hernandez, a Cuban-born agent who represents several of the defectors. They say, “ ‘Hey, I’m just as talented as he is. He’s in the big leagues. So I’m going to go.’ ”

The fact that, of the most recent signees, only Chapman and Anderson ever played for Cuba’s elite national team only fuels the false hopes of others. And even Chapman was never a star on the island, posting a losing record in two of his four seasons in the Cuban league and a 5.68 earned-run average in two games in the last World Baseball Classic.

Of course, Chapman does have that triple-digit s fastball from the left side, plus he has yet to grow into his lanky 6-foot-5 frame. And he is young, which also explains why upstarts such as Hechevarria and Iglesias were awarded bigger deals than Anderson, who will be 28 by opening day.

“The older player pretty much is what he is,” said Angels General Manager Tony Reagins, whose team scouted Chapman heavily. “Younger players, if you can cultivate them and develop them and you see from a projection standpoint these guys could be better than what they are currently, then it makes them a little bit more attractive.”

Signing them, however, can be an exercise in patience.

Before a player is allowed to talk to a big league organization, his status must be approved by both the U.S. Treasury Department and MLB’s commissioner’s office, a process that can take a year or more.

While they wait, some players struggle to stay in top physical shape and lose their game-ready edge. Many have played no more than a handful of games since they left Cuba, where big league teams are banned from scouting. That further complicates the negotiating process since both scouts and agents often know little more about a player than his batting average and birth date -- and even those sometimes can’t be trusted.

“It’s difficult because you really don’t get to see them as much, get to know them,” Cincinnati GM Walt Jocketty said. “In the Dominican, most times you can bring guys into your academy and work them out for a while, get to know them more on an everyday basis, their personality and so forth. So far with the Cubans, you have very limited exposure to them.”

Jockeying among agents -- who often are paying a prospect’s room and board -- is another issue. In the defector market, allegiances shift with the wind.

Ruiz, for example, had a spectacular falling out with his representative that eventually found its way into the Spanish-language media, with one newspaper printing the charges and countercharges between the first baseman and his former agent, Jorge Luis Toca, a defector himself who once played for the New York Mets. Even Chapman, whose wait was shortened dramatically because he defected in Europe with passport in hand, changed agents, leaving a trail of legal briefs in his wake.

“This is a mess right now,” said one American League scout, whose team forbids him from speaking on the record. “It’s crazy.”

It would probably be worse were the very best players in Cuba on the market, but they’re not. Members of the island’s elite national team, who in the past received perks ranging from travel to cars, apartments and even government jobs, tend to stay put.

That’s why the best players among the defectors are a mix of veterans such Anderson, Maya and pitcher Yadel Marti, who lost their place on the national team, or young players such as Iglesias, Hechevarria and Arguelles, whose path to the national team was blocked.

“There seems to have be an uptick in terms of the caliber of the players who are leaving. But that elite group of Cuban players, I think 95% of them are still in Cuba,” said Joe Kehoskie, an agent who has been following the Cuban player market for more than a decade. “The guys that almost without debate could walk out of Cuba and play in the big leagues, that really elite group of Cubans still hasn’t left.”

Chapman was an exception.

“I don’t think he’s reaching even close to his ceiling,” said Tony Fossas, a Cuban-born coach who m the Reds assigned to shadow Chapman this spring. “He’s got a real fresh arm. He’s fundamentally sound . . . a tremendous athlete.

“My job is to help him assimilate the best I can. The culture. The customs. The ‘thank-yous,’ the ‘you’re welcomes.’ ”

Some of that is already seeping in. Chapman has a locker in the middle of the Reds’ spring training clubhouse and seems to go out of his way to bump into visitors, giving him a chance to playfully try out his favorite English expression.

“Coos me,” he says with a heavy accent.

Otherwise, Chapman blends in with the rest of the Reds. He already has major league bling, quickly slipping a gold chain with an oversized pendant around his neck after a recent workout, the jewelry centering itself between black stars tattooed on each shoulder.

That Chapman has made it this far amazes teammate Yonder Alonso, who, at age 10, left Cuba with his father Luis, a catcher in the Cuban league.

“We leave because we’re looking for a better opportunity, a better life,” Alonso said. “We don’t want to leave our family. I never got to see my grandparents.”

Among those Chapman left behind were his parents, two sisters, a girlfriend and his daughter, Ashanti Brianna, who was born three days before his defection in the Netherlands.

“Think about that,” Alonso said, shaking his head. “Are you going to see your daughter ever? Are you going to see your kid? Maybe you have a chance to go, but how about you never get to see your kids anymore?

“A lot of times that happens. So it’s rough.”

Especially since, as many defectors are learning, simply leaving doesn’t guarantee a lucrative contract will be waiting.

Even those who do become rich sometimes find that family is worth more than millions.

“Now you have money here and you can’t enjoy it because you’re thinking your mom’s in Cuba suffering,” said Arguelles, who seemed to grow more depressed the longer he talked about his defection and its aftermath.

Yet, no one expects the stream of players being smuggled out of Cuba to slow any time soon.

“There’s no question there’s much more of a pipeline now,” said Kehoskie, the agent with the long Cuban track record. “Cuban players are kind of coming to their senses and deciding that instead of spending their best years in Cuba then defecting when they’re old, they’re trying their hand at major league baseball while they’re young and they have their best years ahead of them.”

It makes sense for the big league teams, too, he added: “When you can sign a player for $4 million and have him go directly to the big leagues and play a premium position in your starting lineup, that’s a pretty good value.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Cuban all-stars

Rene Arocha became the first baseball player to defect from Cuba since the revolution when he walked away from the national team at the Miami airport on July 4, 1991. Since then, more than 200 have followed. Some have been major disappointments -- the Yankees wasted $4.4 million on Andy Morales in 2001; he gave back a .239 average in 234 at-bats in the low minors. Others, such as pitchers Jose Contreras, Danys Baez and Livan Hernandez, have been All-Stars. Here’s a look at an all-star team of Cuban defectors:

1B: Kendry Morales -- The Angels’ switch-hitting slugger lived up to his promise last season, batting .306 with 34 homers and 108 RBIs, finishing fifth in voting for American League MVP in his first full major league season.

2B: Yuniesky Betancourt -- Now the Kansas City Royals shortstop, he twice hit .289 for Seattle in a five-year career.

SS: Rey Ordonez -- In nine seasons, Ordonez played 973 games for three teams, the most by any defector. He hit just .246 but won three consecutive Gold Glove Awards for the New York Mets.

3B: Yunel Escobar -- A sure-handed defender with good bat control, Escobar has a career average of .301 after three seasons with Atlanta, mostly at shortstop.

LF: Jorge Luis Toca -- Primarily a first baseman, Toca never lived up to the hype that followed him from Cuba, getting just 27 big league at-bats, and striking out in 11 of them.

CF: Alexei Ramirez -- The versatile Ramirez has played five positions since stepping off the Cuban national team and into the Chicago White Sox starting lineup. A .283 career hitter, Ramirez has more RBIs (145) than strikeouts (127) as a big leaguer.

RF: Alex Sanchez -- After stealing as many as 92 bases in a season in the minors, Sanchez hit .296 in five big league summers in which he earned a reputation for being a discipline problem. In 2005, Sanchez became the first player suspended for using performance-enhancing substances.

C: Brayan Pena -- Primarily a backup in five big league seasons, Pena played a career-high 64 games for the Royals last summer, batting .273 with six homers.

SP: Livan and Orlando Hernandez -- The half brothers, both right-handers, have combined for 246 big-league wins (Livan has 156), a 16-6 postseason record and six World Series titles.

CL: Danys Baez -- Baez’s 114 saves and his single-season best of 41 in 2005 are the most by a Cuban-born pitcher.

--Kevin Baxter