Latin Empire

Over at baseball-reference.com's Stat of the Day, a new study shows that 53% of of the Mets' 2007 plate apearances were from players born in Latin American countries, compared to 24% in the majors generally, and that 30% of the Mets' innnings pitched were thrown by pitchers born in Latin American countries, compared to 18% in the majors.

I think that, consciously or not, Omar is taking the same approach to Hispanic-heritage players that Oakland's general manager 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.