What's My Name Again?

January 19, 2012 1:37 PM

Cleveland Indians pitcher Fausto Carmona was arrested today in the Dominican Republic and charged with using a false identity.

According to the police, his real name is Roberto Hernandez Heredia and he's 31, not 28 as he claimed.

Carmona/Heredia was arrested just a few months after Florida Marlins pitcher Juan Carlos Oviedo was arrested for assuming the identity of his (younger) best friend, Leo Nunez.

posted by SisterHavana (26 comments total)

This is, presumably for youth baseball competitive advantage purposes?
posted by leotrotsky at 1:41 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]

Are we sure that this isn't a elaborate ruse by Fausto, designed for him to disown his 2011 season? That pitching line would make me want to change my identity too.
posted by .kobayashi. at 1:44 PM on January 19 [5 favorites]

Pinch hitting for Roberto Hernandez Heredia, number fifty-five, Fausto Carmona...
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:52 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

El Duque pulls off his Carmona mask: "And I would've gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids!"
posted by mattbucher at 1:57 PM on January 19 [8 favorites]

This is, presumably for youth baseball competitive advantage purposes?

It's becoming common practice for prospects to try to falsify their age/identity to give themselves a better outlook when negotiating signing bonuses, etc. Younger with talent equals more potential, etc.
posted by empyrean at 1:58 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

And by common practice I mean it's a known issue, not that every play is doing it or something.
posted by empyrean at 1:59 PM on January 19

Mephistopheles wins again.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 2:00 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

He's a sinkerballer. This can only help his career.
posted by tigrefacile at 2:01 PM on January 19

So the real Carmona is contractually obliged to be on the mound for the Tribe this year? That ought to be interesting.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:05 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

I have it on good authority that Dustin Pedroia's real name is Jimmy Bubbles and he's only 14 years old.
posted by nathancaswell at 2:11 PM on January 19 [6 favorites]

Not Fausto!
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:37 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

It's becoming common practice for prospects to try to falsify their age/identity to give themselves a better outlook when negotiating signing bonuses, etc. Younger with talent equals more potential, etc.

So, more seriously, it's particularly a practice with Dominican players, because the Dominican Republic has a large system of baseball academies that are run by major league clubs, that take in primarily dirt-poor teenage boys with very few financial/economic/nice life options. Ostensibly, every kid at the academy is a prospect, but in reality they are there to fill out rosters for a few years so the one or two actual prospects have someone to play with and against. Once you are about nineteen or so, your moment has pretty much passed and worse you've dropped out of school and are about to be spit out into developing-world poverty again. So there is a very real incentive to develop as a player outside the academies until you are eighteen and then play at an academy as a "sixteen-year-old" or to hit two or three academies, shaving a couple years off your age for each new club.

Major league baseball hates this, naturally, because an 18-year-old with no breaking ball or an undeveloped fastball or no power or bad plate instincts or whatever is actually a really different animal than a 16-year-old with those problems, so the clubs have resorted to extreme and kind of ethically-murky things like doing DNA tests on prospects and their parents and siblings, up to and including bone scans to determine the birth order of siblings to verify age (nyt line). I understand wanting to know the real age, but I think the position basically boils down to, "Our supply of desperate outfielding chattel is beginning to outsmart us," which is gross, and I think the desire to help your family out of poverty and to get three meals a day at an academy for as long as possible is more morally defensible than being honest to your baldly-exploitative employer.

And of course baseball is the Dominican Republic's main export, so the Dominican government will play ball (excuse the pun) with whatever MLB wants.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 2:42 PM on January 19 [25 favorites]

This must be a basis for the Indians to void his contract, no?
posted by dixiecupdrinking at 2:50 PM on January 19

Ron Mexico was unavailable for comment.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:57 PM on January 19 [3 favorites]

This is, presumably for youth baseball competitive advantage purposes?

It's becoming common practice for prospects to try to falsify their age/identity to give themselves a better outlook when negotiating signing bonuses, etc. Younger with talent equals more potential, etc.

Hereafter referred to as a Fausto-ian Bargain?
posted by Chuffy at 3:11 PM on January 19 [4 favorites]

Interestingly (or disappointingly) I found this article about how MLB's stringent testing of Dominican prospects has moved the international prospect market to Venezuela, where apparently the league believes there is a source of highly talented, focused and devoted baseball savants who don't take steroids and wouldn't falsify their age.

It's kind of rich to stripmine an entire country of its talented young people in service of profit at home to begin with, but to then up and move the party to another quasi-impoverished developing nation, this one with a functional dictatorship, while whining about those nasty dirty cheaters who are also from a different race than the people who run this business which happens to be historically stereotyped as a race and culture of lazy dirty cheaters who very briefly found a way to sneak around the walls until expensive technology caught up with them is, uh, special. To say the least.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 3:19 PM on January 19 [2 favorites]

He has a reasonable chance to pitch 200 league average innings, with some upside above that, and he's on a market value contract. Indians won't void him unless he goes to prison or something;

Hitters can lose a lot of value from 28-31, but that particular age range difference isn't as big of a deal for pitchers, especially someone who depends more on location than velocity like Fausto.

They'll roll him out there if he can find a way into the country.

/Indians fan
posted by Kwine at 3:19 PM on January 19

Ron Mexico was unavailable for comment.

NEVER FORGET.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 3:36 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

Hm. I don't think this is what "player to be named later" means.
posted by rokusan at 5:17 PM on January 19 [14 favorites]

Snarl Furillo's excellent comment should be this post's "More Inside".
posted by rokusan at 6:20 PM on January 19 [1 favorite]

(Errr, the first comment, actually. Mod to fix or not per official scorer's discretion.)
posted by rokusan at 6:20 PM on January 19

Ron Mexico was unavailable for comment.

NEVER FORGET.

Karma always obliges.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:11 PM on January 19

I remember a few years back when Carmona and Sabbathia were presented as this unhittable playoff 1-2 lineup and while CC wasn't his current self either, Carmona got shelled. I suppose he really was an impostor the whole time. He should've impersonated a better pitcher.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:02 AM on January 20

Still my favorite athlete false identity incident: "Worrell, who is 6-foot-7 and black, repeatedly identified himself as Lilja, a 6-foot-3 Swede who is white".
posted by Copronymus at 5:18 AM on January 20

Fangraph's Dave Cameron weighs in with cheap Carmona alternative for the Indians.
posted by Kwine at 10:44 AM on January 20 [1 favorite]

Indians fan here. While the article Kwine posted makes a good case for Fausto/Roberto bouncing back somewhat, he's been a tremendous source of aggravation for me anyway, posting just one season with an ERA under 5.25 since his stellar 2007 season (I know ERA is an overrated stat but I'm a poor sabermetrician even though I realize its importance, so ERA is the easiest point of reference I understand).

High heat makes the case that the historical perspective of Fausto bouncing back longterm isn't strong.

The problem is the Indians don't have any high-minors starting pitchers that seem particularly promising, so I hope Dave Cameron is right that the Indians can make a trade assuming Fausto won't be back.

I would like more elaboration on this paragraph though, 'cause it confuses me:

Unfortunately for Cleveland, Heredia’s in-flux status means that they can’t really count on being able to void his contract and reallocate those funds to another pitcher. There’s still a chance he could get his visa and join the team, in which case the club would still be on the hook for his salary – trying to get the contract completely voided on the basis of fraud isn’t easy and the case wouldn’t be settled any time soon.

BLATANT IDENTITY FRAUD isn't an easy way to get your contract voided???
posted by mreleganza at 11:20 AM on January 20