Ben Sadler of Baseball America published an interesting story today about international baseball darling Edward Salcedo (read my "Rumors and Scouting" post about him).  MLB has reportedly fired three investigators from the Dominican Republic and one of them was working on the Salcedo case (to authenticate his real birth date), inflaming rumors that the talented shortstop (client of Scott Boras) might be older than 16.

All MLB says at this point is that it is still investigating the case of Salcedo to establish the validity of his documents and confirm that he is 16 years old. At least four international scouts, speaking anonymously, told Baseball America they believe Salcedo is older than 16.

"I've heard the rumors myself," said Ronaldo Peralta, MLB's manager for Latin American operations. "A lot of word spread around, but the truth is that we haven't finished the investigation process of his documentation. We cannot tell you if his documents are in order or not.

"When you sign a player for a lot of money, there's going to be jealousy, people spreading all kinds of rumors, but the truth is that we haven't finished, we haven't completed the process."

"I don't think there has been any confusion," said Scott Boras, who is representing Salcedo. "The information we have from everyone involved is that there's no dispute into Edward's age. There were some issues I think regarding the lineage and the number of family members and the things of that nature, but those are standard investigatory steps that they take. And it's been verified that Edward's age and documents are in fact his documents.

"The documents they we've been presented with and presented to Major League Baseball establish that he's 16 years old," Boras added. "We have not gotten any information from MLB to suggest that these documents are not in order."

In this case, the other question is: why would MLB fire three investigators?  For doing their jobs?  I'd be curious to hear the answer to that.