Inside the Orioles academy, on Abriendo El Podcast

In Abriendo El Podcast's tour of the Baltimore Orioles academy, host Ricardo Rodríguez walks through the club's Dominican academy in Guerra, one of the Major League academies based in the country.

Along the way, the academy's staff explain how a year runs, from the January signings to the Dominican Summer League, and show where the players sleep, study, train and eat. It is the first in a series of academy tours the show is making in the Dominican Republic.

Superintendent Elvis Fernández, who saw the complex built from bare ground, walks the grounds: full-size game fields, a separate bullpen complex, and an artificial-turf agility field.

He explains why the agility field exists. Drills used to run on the outfield grass, and "the grass gets damaged a lot, because you tend to use one specific area and the players only run there."

The synthetic surface also keeps training going after heavy rain: "as soon as it stops raining, we can be out there."

Turf Diamond maintains the playing surfaces at the Orioles academy. On the game fields, that means caring for the natural grass and leveling and conditioning the red-clay infields, so every field is ready for play.

On the agility field shown in the tour, we deep-clean the synthetic turf, redistribute the rubber infill and brush the fibers upright.

You can see that work, along with our landscaping at the academy, in our completed projects.