Monday, January 28, 2008
Do The Mets Favor Latin American Players?
Every once and a while I'll check out the "Stat of the Day" on Baseball-Reference, which everyone knows is THE site for all your baseball statistical needs. While browsing over the last few days, I came across this gem.
Ever since Omar Minaya became the Mets GM, one of the most heated topics among Mets fans has been his apparent favoring of players from Latin America. The statisticians over at BR used their Play Index tool to investigate how accurate this theory is.
The results are pretty interesting, check it out.
NOTE: Also check out the follow up post that shows the results in chart form
Labels:
Mike Peters,
New York Mets,
Omar Minaya
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2 comments:
Mike Peters
said...
I agree... just because they have higher percentages does not mean they necessarily favor certain players...
The point that usually comes up in this debate is that the mets certainly have more Latin American players than they did a few years ago, but so does almost every other team in baseball as well.
I think this shows, the mets increase in Latin American players is not completely explained by the trend of increasing Latin American players in baseball in general.
Which is why you could conclude that the Mets might favor Latin American players more than other teams do.
1/28/08, 10:32 AM
I agree... just because they have higher percentages does not mean they necessarily favor certain players...
The point that usually comes up in this debate is that the mets certainly have more Latin American players than they did a few years ago, but so does almost every other team in baseball as well.
I think this shows, the mets increase in Latin American players is not completely explained by the trend of increasing Latin American players in baseball in general.
Which is why you could conclude that the Mets might favor Latin American players more than other teams do.
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This is one of the cases where the numbers don't really "prove" anything.
Let's go back to 1969. The Mets had three players who went to high school in the Mobile, Alabama area (Agee, Jones, and Amos Otis). An analysis of the high schools of major leaguers would show that the Mets had an inordinately large number of players who went to high school in the Mobil Alabama area.
But so what? That doesn't show that the player's high school was a determining factor in acquiring them.
So the numbers only show that the distribution was higher than for other teams. The numbers cannot show why Omar chose the players, only the result. But the result is merely a quirk of how the numbers are distributed around the league.
Using it as proof is like using numbers to prove psychic phenomenon exist -- some people score higher than others when "tested" for it, but that doesn't prove they have psychic powers.