Spanish Flushing – Part II
Posted by Raphy on January 26, 2008
Last week I wrote about the numbers surrounding the Mets and their choice of players from Latin America. My post focused on players from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, but as reader Venom pointed out, I did omit several key countries. Lets take a look as those countries and see where the 2007 Mets rank.
Venezuela
In 2007, there were 42 position players from Venezuela. These players played for 24 teams, including 5 on the Cleveland Indians. Endy Chavez was the only Met.
There were 31 Venezuelan pitchers in the majors. They pitched for 18 different teams. The Florida Marlins had 6. The sole Mets' Venezuelan pitcher, Lino Urdaneta, pitched all of one inning.
Mexico
There were 5 Mexican position players in the majors in 2007. None played for the Mets.
There were 13 pitchers from Mexico on 12 teams. The Mets were not one of the three teams who had 2, but they did have Oliver Perez who led all Mexicans in innings pitched.
Other Countries
There were four Cuban position players in 2007. The Mets had none. In 2007 there were four Cuban pitchers in the bigs. The Mets had the best of the bunch in Orlando Hernandez. There were also several big league players from Colombia, Nicaragua and Panama. None of them played for the Mets.
The following charts summarize the Mets' Latin American representation in 2007 as compared to the rest of the league.
| PA - League | % of Total League PA | PA - Mets | % of Total Mets PA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dominican Republic | 21,836 | 12% | 1241 | 20% |
| Puerto Rico | 8101 | 4% | 1859 | 29% |
| Venezuela | 11,249 | 6% | 165 | 3% |
| Other | 4504 | 2% | 116 | 2% |
| Total | 45,690 | 24% | 3381 | 53% |
| IP - League | % of Total League IP | IP - Mets | % of Total Mets IP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dominican Republic | 4022.67 | 9% | 223.67 | 15% |
| Puerto Rico | 771 | 2% | 69.67 | 5% |
| Venezuela | 1912 | 4% | 1 | 0% |
| Other | 902.33 | 2% | 147.67 | 10% |
| Total | 7608 | 18% | 442 | 30% |
January 26th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
[...] Please see Spanish Flushing II for a continuation of this [...]
January 27th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Do the league-wide figures include or exclude the Mets?
I think that, consciously or not, Omar is taking the same approach to Hispanic-heritage players that Billy Beane took during the Moneyball years to types of players the market seemed to undervalue a bit. In Beane's case he loooked for players who walked a lot, for college prospects instead of high school prospects, for sidearm pitchers, and players in other categories that the market seemd to undervalue at the time. For Minaya, I think he believes, and he may well be quite right, that in many cases between an American born player and an Hispanic player of equal talent, the market will undervalue the Hispanic player a bit and there is thus sometimes a market opportunity there.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:31 am
The league-wide figures include the Mets.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:43 am
One thing to keep in mind with this data is that the Mets' numbers are based on a pretty small sample size. One or two players from a given location make a big difference here. I'm not suggesting that the Mets/Minaya do NOT favor Latino players--they just might--but rather that we probably need a lot more data to really prove it.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Agreed.
My intention was only to add to the discussion, not to end it.