Reese Kaplan -- A Losing Streak is Not Always the Biggest Flaw

As Mets fans we have grown up with all kinds of embarrassments associated with the organization.  Without going into far too much detail, let’s just recall owner ego for the Seaver and Kingman trades, domestic violence and substance abuse issues with various players, inappropriate contact with members of the opposite sex from players and a manager, the whole Bernie Madoff thing and countless other issues.  We could go on and on but there’s a time limit to reading these posts and it would appear that the same holds true for our collective digestion and blood pressure.

One area in which the Mets have been mostly absent from the headlines concerns the vice of gambling.  Yes, surely there were some players who put too much into casino games, online poker, Superbowl bets and other recreational wagering gone wrong.  However, to our knowledge no one’s translator gambled away millions of dollars nor did they do a Pete Rose and earn themselves a ban for life from baseball.

Give it time, however...

This week it was not the Dodgers reeling from gambling related offenses but down the highway from there the San Diego Padres for the second time employ a minor leaguer by the name of Tucupita Marcano who is still recovering from an injury which led to his post Padres days getting terminated from the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

Now to look a little more closely at his minor league numbers and it would appear a fringe utility player would be the ceiling for his baseball future.  Maybe he felt he needed to juice his short term baseball career however he could...or maybe he simply wanted to emulate the would-be Hall of Famer in Rose.  We don’t yet know.

However, what is apparently clear to everyone is that MLB investigated his time on the IL last year and it wasn’t just Billy Eppler having an issue on the right way to recover from injuries.  Mr. Marcano was using his time off the field to show how big a fan he was by betting on Pirates games.  Per the MLB rules on this type of transaction, you set yourself up being banned for life for betting on your own team.  Wait, didn’t we see this movie before in Cincinnati?

The investigative unit for MLB is apparently targeting four other baseball players over the very same type of behavior.  This group included another Padres farmhand named Jay Groomer, a Phillies player named Jose Rodriguez, a Diamondbacks player named Andrew Saalfrank and an Athletics player named Michael Kelly.  Since they were shown to bet on baseball but not on their own teams they received one year suspensions instead of the now imposed lifetime ban facing Marcano.

So the next time the Mets post a baseball stretch like the month of May in 2023, just sit back and remember that the Cohen organization does not have a monopoly on baseball unintended comedy.  Others do it even better.  Just ask Shohei Ohtani about his now former translator and the $17 million of his money that went to fund his gambling.