Wagner Mateo, the Near-Sighted Dominican

You may have heard that the Cardinals recently voided the $3.1 million contract they gave to 16 year old Dominican prospect Wagner Mateo, when they conducted a physical exam and discovered that his eye sight is terrible.  According to this article, Mateo’s vision is 20-200, which can be improved with lenses to 20-30.

Not good enough for the Cardinals.  Apparently, they had him examined by top eye doctors, who determined he would not be a good candidate for LASIC.  [For the record, I had LASIC on my eyes in 2002 at the age of roughly 34.  I had 20-40 vision in left eye and 8-400 vision in my right.  Now my eye site is about 20-20 in the left eye and 20-25 in the right eye.  It's like a miracle.]

The Cardinals are taking some criticism for not having the physicals done before signing the contract, although I suspect that the contract is clear that passing a physical was part of the contract and that the Cardinals could void the deal if they found something they didn’t like.

It’s a tough break for Mateo ( and all his advisers who would have gotten a cut), but I can see the Cardinals’ side of it.  When you sign a 16 year old player, you are signing almost exclusively on the basis of physical abilities (arm strength, foot speed, bat speed).

The Cardinals have certainly watched Mateo play ball with his peer group, and I’m sure that Mateo can play.  However, for $3.1 million, a team is going to want the full physical package, and poor eyesight raises real questions about how far the prospect can go before he can’t see the ball well enough to continue hitting.

For what it’s worth, there is no one-to-one correspondence between ability to hit major league pitching and good eyesight.  Sure, Ted Williams had something like 20-10 vision, which allowed him to become a fighter pilot in both the Second World War and the Korean War, but as he himself said, it wasn’t so much his ability to see the ball as it was his ability to lay off pitches out of the strike zone that made him a great hitter.

One marginal Hall-of-Famer, the under-remembered Chick Hafey, had such poor vision that, despite wearing coke-bottle-thick, wire-rim spectacles, he reportedly still had trouble reading billboards from across the street.  Nevertheless, he led the National League with a .349 batting average in 1931 and finished his career with a .317 batting average in more than 4,600 career major league ABs.  Here’s a photo of Hafey from the Hall of Fame’s website, along with a blurb which mentions his “weak eyes.”

All considered, Hafey is one of the weakest members of the Hall of Fame.  However, there is no doubt whatsoever that he could hit.  If he could do it, then Mateo could do it.  I also wonder whether Mateo would be a better LASIC (or other modern corrective vision procedure) in his early 20’s when he has stopped growing.

Someone will sign Mateo to professional contract in the next year, but likely at far less than the $3.1 million the Cardinals were willing to give him before they found out about his vision.  I don’t feel too sorry for Mateo.  Losing this contract simply means he will actually have to earn his riches as a professional ballplayer through his play on the field.