The Futility Infielder

Birthdategate

The heightened security measures which have made it more difficult for foreigners to attain work visas post-September 11 have shaken several ballplayers' birth-certificate discrepancies out of the trees. Among those aging before our very eyes: Indians pitcher Bartolo Colon (4 years!), Yanks hurler Orlando Hernandez (3 years, one year less than the Yankees and the local media had posited for quite some time), Angels pitcher Ramon Ortiz (3 years), Mets outmaker Rey Ordonez (2 years), Royals shortstop Neifi Perez (2 years), and Yanks futilityman Enrique Wilson (2 years).

I've got mixed emotions about these revelations. Lying about one's age is a time-honored tradition in baseball, particularly among Latin American ballplayers--a mode contract-signing gamesmanship and a way to give a vulnerable segment of the player population a little bit of leverage to use with teams. It can certainly make a prospect more enticing--developmentally speaking, the skills shown by an 18-year old are worth even more when shown by a 17-year old. But it can also cause a team to lose a player if they can be shown to have signed him while he was underage (witness several cases involving the Dodgers in recent years, including Adrian Beltre, whom they at least were able to re-sign).

Several years down the road, it can make a 28-year old suspect out of a 26-year old "prospect," (as in the case of Wilson, whose hype has impressed the likes of John Hart and Brian Cashman but not me) or reveal a "29"-year old to be even further past his statisical peak then previously thought (see Rey .000rdoñez). With so much riding on player contracts, it remains to be seen whether teams use these discrepancies to wriggle free from suddenly even-less-favorable commitments (like the Yankees did when they found out Cuban defector Andy Morales had lied about his age and couldn't even hit AA pitching).

These revelations may also shed light on mysteries such as why Colon seemed to be so durable a pitcher at such a tender age, or why Carlos Baerga seemed to fall apart so quickly. Baerga's age hasn't officially been affected by the situation, presumably becaues he remained in the country this past winter, but it certainly would make sense if we were to discover he was 25-29 during his Indians heyday and 33 when he began his tour of oblivion instead of 22-26 and 30). Still, we may never pin down the ages of some players who haven't left the country, or who are no longer active, and that's probably a good thing. We'll just have to wait until Fernando Valenzuela's tree has fallen to count his many rings.