Free agent third baseman Yoan Moncada has won a $7 million-plus arbitration judgment against his former agent David Hastings, according to court documents obtained by The Post.
Moncada won a sweeping victory over Hastings, who had been Moncada’s power of attorney and the executor of his will as well as his agent until 2020. MLB Players Association arbitrator James Hayes, handed down the ruling.
“This has been a years-long battle for justice in this situation in which I was taken advantage of by people I trusted,” Moncada said through his lawyers. “I appreciate the support of the Players Association in this matter.”
Moncada was claiming unrestrained fraud and breaches of fiduciary duty.
Hastings’ attorney Don Hodson, reached by The Post, said they will be contesting the ruling. “We’re very confident on our odds of getting it vacated even though that’s usually an uphill battle,” Hodson said.
Hodson claimed the MLBPA “green-lighted” all of Hastings transactions, and that they plan to sue the MLBPA, too.
“No evidence of any green-lighting by the Players Association was presented at the hearing, end of story,” responded Moncada’s attorney, Jordan Siev of Reed Smith.
The MLBPA declined comment.
Hodson also said Hastings’ wife, Josefa Gonzalez, will be continuing her lawsuit against Moncada in a Florida court.
Court filings and emails within the documents expose a messy tale about the outsized efforts to procure for profit a talented Cuban player, who started off making $4 a month playing baseball for a local team in Cuba before emigrating to the United States, where he originally signed a $31.5 million Red Sox contract. That was before international bonuses were severely limited by MLB to $5.5 million to $6.5 million, partly in an effort to curtail extreme efforts to extract enormous commissions from unsophisticated young ballplayers.
Gonzalez and her associate Nicole Banks, with Hastings’ assistance, established a company they called Baseball Divas LLC to procure talented Cuban players, according to the court filing. Furthermore, Banks was hired as the recruiter with a promise to receive a portion of future commissions, and she wound up recruiting Moncada, and also marrying him.
According to the filing, Banks, after hearing from a Yankee scout that they’d pay Moncada $20 million if he was able to get to the U.S., found Moncada at his hotel. They soon developed a romantic relationship and married six months later (they have one child but have since divorced.) Moncada testified that he knew nothing of Banks’ business relationship with the Hastings at the time.
Gonzalez has been pursuing a lawsuit against Moncada, claiming she made an agreement with Moncada for him to pay her 30 percent of his first deal and 20 percent of subsequent deals. However, Hastings and Gonzalez never produced any documents to this effect even though Moncada testified that he signed anything they put in front of him. Moncada spoke no English at the time.
Moncada, who received a $5 million Angels deal last winter for the 2025 season, testified that he agreed only to pay her 20 percent of his first deal after they funded his emigration to the United States.
The arbitrator awarded $4.25 million in damages plus $500,000 in attorneys fees plus interest, and the amount has surpassed $7 million based due to interest rates over time.
“This decision serves as an important affirmation of the protections afforded to players by the MLBPA Regulations,” Siev said. “We look forward to continuing Yoan’s pursuit of justice against those that took advantage of him as he left Cuba and became a major league baseball player years ago.”