And finally, we’ve got a real shortstop on the bench.

Great site glad I found it.
Alex Cora is a nice get for us.

can he play second base?

Hes a true utility man he can play all infield positions even though he has not played much if any first

anyobdy who can take away playing time from you know who is ok in my book.

Nobody is saying that Omar is a stone racist who is bent on getting Latins exclusively. However, the man explicitly said he would place an emphasis on tapping the Latin market. His first big signings, Beltran and Pedro, were promoted in this way in said Latin market, and he alienated Carlos Delgado by promoting the Latin-heavy identity of the team in negotiations. His drafting is heavily oriented towards the international (Latin) talent pool and he has a record of severely overvaluing Latin talent (see the trade of Keppinger for Gotay, the Castillo signing, the Nady for Hernandez/Perez deal—yes, Ollie was a throw-in—and the current mess with Lowe, Sheets, and Perez).

Simply pointing out that we have non-Latin players is not pertinent in the discussion. The question is not one of racism, but bias, however subtle it may be. There is a strong—though not definitive—case for its existence.

And another thing: if Omar McDonald were overvaluing white talent in this way, promoting a white team identity, explicitly talking about tapping the NASCAR market, alienating white players by talking their ear off about a white team identity, and trading non-whites for inferior white talent, I suspect that those who dismiss these criticisms as “racist” would be singing a different tune. Look at the Lastings Milledge fiasco and all the (legitimate) accusations of racism thrown at the Wilpons.

And another thing: if Omar McDonald were overvaluing white talent in this way, promoting a white team identity, explicitly talking about tapping the NASCAR market, alienating white players by talking their ear off about a white team identity, and trading non-whites for inferior white talent, I suspect that those who dismiss these criticisms as "racist" would be singing a different tune. Look at the Lastings Milledge fiasco and all the (legitimate) accusations of racism thrown at the Wilpons.

I suspect that if Omar showed the same signs of bias towards whites that he shows with Latins, in the exact context that he has shown it, (particularly in combination with making the same explicit statements about exploiting the Latino market, with the substitution of “NASCAR” for "Latino") SQUAD would be all over him in a much harsher way that I. There is a correlation between people who can’t wait to shout “racist” at whites and people who will defend minorities for the exact same behaviors. The point is not contradictory or irrelevant. Lastings Milledge is not Latino and Wilpon is not Omar Minaya, and I never said that Omar is bent on exclusvely signing Latins, and SQUAD might want to dismount his high horse.

Once again, I am not accusing Omar of racism. I’m saying that Latino favoritism, conscious or not, is at least plausible. Gina pointed out another example with Omar’s love of Ibañez. The Pedro signing was questionable, and I would have to review the free agent class of 2005 to see if you’re right about Pedro unambiguously being one of the best options. Also, the Burgos, Seo, and Nady deals were defensible, but the fact remains that they do demonstrate a pattern that at least raises the possibility that Omar is preoccupied with acquiring Latin players and exploiting the Latin market. The fact that Omar panicked with Sanchez’s injury is irrelevant, because we are not dealing with the rationales behind the the trades (again, I’m not saying that he spends his time thinking about replacing white guys with Latins) we are dealing with the players he got and if there is any bias in his valuations. How the previous organization treated Keppinger is also irrelevant, for the same reason. The fact remains that Omar severely overvalued a Latin player with respect to a non-Latin. There are hints of bias here, and people should not be shouted down for pointing out these hints.

The grumbling about Latin bias have been going on for quite awhile. The difference between playing up Latin team identity and playing up the Latin identities of individual players is not as great as you seem to think it is, IMO. (Delgado seemed to think it was rather crude.) And I’ll ask you straight out: would you be all chill if Omar got caught saying to Billy Wagner "Hey Billy; Come to the Mets with Tom Glavine and DW! They’re white just like you! And Dub’s from Virginia! You’ll have a blast!? If so, I apologize.

And actually, I’m not insinuating anything. I am saying something and not saying something else, which is quite different from saying something and insinuating something else. Once again, Omar is not a racist. He has shown no sign of being racist. He is not at all against having white guys on his team, which is why listing white Mets is (once again) irrelevant, as is a list of Latin players he let go. He also offered Eckstein a worse deal than Castillo that Eckstein refused. I’m not talking absolutes, just general tendencies. All I’m saying is that one can make a plausible case that he harbors a slight bias in his talent valuation towards Latins, for reasons that might include his sensitivity to the Latin market. The Delgado thing is one of a number of signs that these issues preoccupy Omar. I’m not even saying he does have that bias, just that given his history, and even his public statements it’s not out of the question. The fact that Ibañez was the only OF he seemed interested in, when he was the worst of the marqui FA outfielders, supports this, even if he ended up signing with someone else.

Anyway, this isn’t particularly productive. Even if Omar does have such a bias, it’s far from his greatest weakness. He is overall a poor talent evaluator who is uncreative, unresourceful, behind the times, and who does not know how to manage an offseason and put a roster together. His idiotic “one thing at a time” methodology simply allowed all the position players we might have signed and a few marginal wins we might have gained to slip away while Omar was screwing the pooch with Lowe.

I think he favors certain skill-sets which the media/mass public, usually associate with Latino players/non-white players, whether it’s true or not, like speed/defense/athleticism w/e, vs “unathletic mashers”, like Burrel or Dunn.

As does SQUAD. What I was saying is that one has to examine the issue to see whether or not a trend exists. Just putting names out there does not do much, since few people accuse him of overt racism. It would require a sustained look at Omar’s moves throughout his tenure as GM of the Mets to see if there is or is not a trend, slight as it may be. And it’s not worth the effort. Since Omar kinda sucks in general, there’s no point in really getting into what would be a minor flaw, even if it exists.

What was bothering me was that some people would shout down anyone who mentioned the issue, even when it is not at all farfetched.

As far as I can tell, nobody inquired about the biases of Philips and Duquette for two reasons.

1) They never did or said anything to raise the question
2) They were so awful that it would be hard to notice if they had, considering their other epic failures.

It’s a question of causation here. Did Omar being Latin raise these suspicions inherently, or did Omar’s actions raise these suspicions, with his ethnicity playing a minor role in reinforcing them?

I believe that very few people would simply assume that Omar is Latino-centric simply because he is Latino. IMO, the vast majority of these murmurings are responses to Omar’s actual actions, not his ethnic background. Some feel that Omar may not be entirely impartial because he seems at times not to have acted impartially, and at times seems more caught-up in the issue than general circumstances could explain.

 I don’t recall anyone bringing this up with the Beltran and Pedro signings. These murmurs began, as far as I know, with the Delgado snub and the 2006 trades of Bell, Ring, Bannister, Seo, Benson, Lindstrom, Nady, and Keppinger for mainly Latin players who were perceived at the time as being a significantly suboptimal return for the traded pieces. Sometimes Omar was right (as with Seo and Benson—and probably Bannister, though he got unlucky there) sometimes he was not (all the rest—including, I would argue, Nady/Hernandez and Perez). Now, true, during that period he also traded Gaby Hernandez for Paul LoDuca and let Jesus Flores slip away; but one would not be unreasonable to see a general trend in the direction of overvaluing Latin players, undervaluing non-Latins, and unduly preoccupying himself with Latin-oriented issues. Do I necessarily agree with this? Honestly, I don’t think about it much; because I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, especially compared to Omar’s other problems. What does bug me, as I said, is when people—not necessarily SQUAD, but certainly some others—shout people down for bringing up a fair point.

The fact that Omar is Latin is probably somewhat relevant, simply because people do often harbor subconscious biases for those with whom they identify, particularly if they feel a strong sense of identity. This is just human nature, and American society these days tends to promote strong ethnic identification and solidarity amongst minorities while discouraging whites to identify ethnically. (I’m not saying that this is good or bad; I’m simply saying it is the case.) Thus, a minority would seem to be more likely to bear these biases than a modern white. (Obviously this was not the case 60 years ago.) Regardless, it is Omar’s actions, not his ethnicity, that produce this response, and I’m pretty sure that if Jim Duquette reversed the ethnicities and did the equivalent of what Omar did from 2006-2008, the question would be raised with him too.

(A more interesting question is this: would people notice if Omar Minaya were favoring whites while Duquette were favoring Latins, even if there were hard evidence supporting this view? The assumption of people favoring those with whom they identify is strong enough that it would take awhile before people got clued in.)