Crazy story this week out of the Dominican Republic where Cleveland Indians pitcher Fausto Carmona, a former All-Star, really isn’t Fausto Carmona. And now he might not be an Indian any longer.
Authorities in the Dominican Republic arrested Carmona and accused him of using a false identity to try to obtain a U.S. visa, a police spokesman said. Colonel Maximo Aybar Baez, a spokesman for the Dominican police, said on his Twitter account that Carmona, whose actual name is Roberto Hernandez Heredia, was arrested after leaving the U.S. Consulate in the Dominican Republic on Thursday.
Authorities said Heredia is 31 years old and not 28, as he has claimed. The Indians list Carmona’s birthday as Dec. 7, 1983, in their 2011 media guide. The pitcher was trying to renew his visa so he could attend spring training in Goodyear, Ariz., next month.
There is still a lot that the Indians don’t know about this case, including whether Carmona will pitch for them in 2012, or ever again. From the Indians’ perspective, the best course of action is probably to assume that Carmona won’t pitch this year. Whether he’s innocent or guilty, he is now stuck in a legal web that may take months or years to untangle.
Carmona showed a devastating sinker in 2007, helping the Indians come within one game of advancing to the World Series, but he has had extraordinary difficulty consistently harnessing that pitch since then; he’s been completely unpredictable from start to start, suddenly and inexplicably losing command. On May 8 of last year, Carmona had a 3.83 ERA, and over the last three-quarters of the season, he posted a 5.71 ERA. He had a 2.53 ERA in July, and a 7.26 ERA in September.
The good news is that unlike in 2008 or 2009, the Indians aren’t counting on Carmona to be a front-of-the-rotation guy; they’ve got two other guys who could qualify as aces in Ubaldo Jimenez and Justin Masterson. Plus the Tribe acquired innings eater Derek Lowe this offseason.
It’s the second such incident involving a major leaguer in the last few months: in December, Miami Marlins pitcher Leo Nunez admitted that he’d falsified his identity at a young age so that he could up his odds to play pro baseball. That didn’t change the Marlins’ feelings – they still offered him a lucrative new contract, one that’s contingent upon his release from the D.R.
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Tags: Cleveland Cavaliers Fausto Carmona’s Indians MLB MLB Baseball
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