SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- About 45 minutes away from the cheering crowds and booming speakers of Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal, the Rays are investing in the future of their organization.

The Rays’ Dominican academy is a nearly year-round home to their youngest prospects, some as young as 16 years old, as they begin their professional careers. The complex outside the town of Guerra contains two full fields, a half-field for practice, a covered batting cage and one large building with administrative offices, classrooms, a clubhouse and a gym, plus a dining room, a game room and dorm rooms for the players.

With the team staying in central Santo Domingo for the Dominican Republic Series against the Red Sox, principal owner Stuart Sternberg joined a travel party of about 25 people, including more than a dozen front office executives, to tour the academy on Saturday morning.

It likely won’t look the same the next time the team visits, as the complex is in the early stages of a significant renovation that will add two more buildings and a new turf field.

“It’s extremely important,” Sternberg said of the academy, which opened in 2009. “What you’re going to see [Saturday] is nothing like what it’s going to look like in two years.”

The project, which could cost nearly $20 million total, will include the creation of a baseball-focused building and a new administrative building, allowing the Rays to improve the housing setup in their existing building, along with more covered facilities so they don’t lose valuable development time during the rainy Dominican summers. The Rays also want to make it a destination for their Dominican players, who could use it as an offseason training site.

The first phase involves the installation of a third field, with turf, that should be ready in time for the Rookie-level Dominican Summer League season.

“It's going to be a big investment that needs to go into and will go into it, because it's not up to our Rays standards,” Sternberg said. “It really is substandard to the way we like to have our players train and how things run. … We’ve had plans for the last couple of years, and now … we're going to get at this. It really is a large investment for us.”

The academy, which neighbors the Dodgers’ complex, hosts offseason workouts, Spring Training, two Dominican Summer League teams and an instructional league camp. There were some young players out on the field Saturday morning, including 17-year-old Brailer Guerrero, who signed with the Rays for $3.7 million in January 2023 and is now their No. 11 prospect according to MLB Pipeline.

It’s in use more than 300 days a year, Rays vice president of baseball operations/assistant general manager Carlos Rodriguez said, and it’s where the 80-90 players there live, learn and work all day, every day.

There are photos of the Rays, past and present, as well as famous moments in franchise history on the walls throughout the facility. But there is one space in particular that serves as motivation for the players. Just outside the dining room is the “Big League Wall,” which contains framed photos of the 24 players who reached the Majors after spending time at the academy. Recent additions include two players on this trip: infielder Jonathan Aranda and catcher René Pinto.

But the academy graduates more than just players, as assistant director of international operations Ronnie Blanco said. It’s a valuable training ground for their coaches and staff.

Rays bullpen coach Jorge Moncada, who is serving as Tampa Bay’s pitching coach this weekend with Kyle Snyder back at the club’s Spring Training camp, got his start in the organization as a pitching instructor and pitching coach at the club’s Venezuelan academy in 2007. Major League field coordinator Tomas Francisco played in the Dominican Summer League for the Rays and coached here from 2013-15.

“Huge, because you can learn how to teach guys from zero, understand the different cultures,” Moncada said. “You don't have access to all the resources that you might have in the U.S., so that also develops yourself to be more creative.”

The Rays expressed their gratitude to the coaches working at the academy by inviting them to join the big league staff in the clubhouse and dugout for their games against the Red Sox this weekend.

“We appreciate them so much. Our coaches here at the academy put a lot of time and a lot of effort in to develop our youngest players,” manager Kevin Cash said. “It’s probably coach and dad/parental figure. For us to give them the opportunity to get here, I hope they appreciate it because we’ll certainly enjoy having them around the next two days.”