Los Mets

Guh. I wanted this to be a happy post. A post about how the Mets are turning the corner after their blowout win against Minnesota last night. But no. Looks like it's more "one step forward and two steps back." Well, not exactly, I guess that won't be true until unless they lose to the Twins tomorrow.

It's cool. I wanted to write about something else anyway. There was a link on deadspin today to this post. The gist of the post was that the kid who runs the blog heard from his "inside source" that Julio Franco is a clubhouse cancer, and since the Mets have been in their June long swoon, Julio has been at the center of a "racial divide" between the Latinos and non-Latinos. To me, this story seems like utter bullshit. The site was just started on June 18th and is even more poorly written/edited than this one. The author of the Julio Franco post is in high school and formerly did something at metsblog. He made this known for a short time this morning before Matt Cerrone, owner and operator of metsblog, asked him to remove his blog's name from the post. This was the appropriate thing to do, however (a) I don't understand why Cerrone is getting help from high school kids if metsblog is his sole profession and (b) he totally pussed out. If he really didn't want his name associated with such a bogus article, he should have reamed the kid a new asshole instead of thanking him and wishing him good luck. We love metsblog here at Out In The Wilderness, but at times its a little too diplomatic. Ideally, we wouldn't even be linking to the offending post, however we're confident that not enough people read this blog to make an impact anyway. (Side note: if you click our site meter and click on "referrals," you will see that someone found our site by googling "pleated jorts." Perhaps this whole blog is worth it after all...)

There has been a lot of talk about the "Latinization" of the Mets ever since Omar Minaya took the reins as GM. Others have stirred the spicy, frijole filled pot as well, what with Ozzie Guillen claiming that Latino players are being unfairly implicated in the recent steroid "crackdown" and Gary Sheffield, being the crazy fuck that he is, claiming that fewer black players are in the league today because MLB wants "easier to control" Latinos.

To throw our sombrero into the "Latino Invasion" ring, I decided to do a scientific study* of Latino players on the twenty-five man active rosters of every MLB team. Here are the results, and bear in mind, I am only including players who were born in a "Latino" country, not just players with Hispanic sounding names:

14 Latinos

New York Mets

9 Latinos
Boston Red Sox
LA Angels
Detroit Tigers

8 Latinos
Arizona Diamondbacks
Cleveland Indians
New York Yankees

7 Latinos
Washington Nationals
Kansas City Royals
Minnesota Twins
Texas Rangers
Seattle Mariners

6 Latinos

Florida Marlins
San Francisco Giants
Chicago White Sox

5 Latinos
Philadelphia Phillies
Chicago Cubs
Colorado Rockies
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers

4 Latinos
Atlanta Braves
Pittsburgh Pirates
LA Dodgers
Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Rays

3 Latinos
Oakland A's

2 Latinos
San Diego Padres
St. Louis Cardinals
Houston Astros

0 Latinos

Toronto Blue Jays

So what do we make of this empirical study? Well, lets look at how the seven teams with the most Latinos are faring in the standings:

Mets: 1st Place, NL East

Red Sox: 1st Place, AL East

Angels: 1st Place, AL West

Tigers: 2nd Place, AL Central

Dbacks: 2nd Place, NL West

Indians: 1st Place, AL Central

Yankees: 2nd Place, AL East

Hmmm...I'm no advanced scout, but I would hypothesize that Latinos = wins. This hypothesis kind of goes to shit once you get to the teams with seven Latinos. This actually seems like the most unlucky number of Latinos to have on your team, since almost all of these teams totally stink.

The point is this: some of the best players in the game today are from Latin American countries. Through increased efforts by major league teams, especially the Mets, to give Latin players access to better fields, equipment, instruction, etc., as well as a vast increase in scouting in these countries, more and more Latino players are going to find success in Major League Baseball. As these players are rushed from their home countries to America at a very young age, it is inevitable that they are going to gravitate towards each other in baseball clubhouses. However, this should never be capitalized on in a race baiting blog post to suggest that the Latino players on a team (especially MY mothafuckin' team) are isolating themselves from the non-Latinos. If this were true, Julio Franco wouldn't have taken Lastings Milledge under his wing. Omar Minaya would not make David Wright's honky ass the face of the franchise. The Mets would not continue to draft white pitcher after white pitcher in the draft every year.

Ultimately, we could give a shit who is on our team. You could have a clubhouse that looked like the fucking UN. If you win, everyone gets along. If you lose, people are going to butt heads. If half of those players are Latino, this does not mean that you have a "racial divide" - it means the Mets your team needs to start winning. Unless you're starting Jorge Sosa against Johan Santana. Then you're just fucked.

*Looked up players on MLB.com