It ain’t easy being a ballplayer in Oaxaca. The city itself is more than nice enough, but the Guerreros had to overcome nearly moving or disbanding last season (a workers strike shut down the Oaxaca ballpark for a time and threatened to close it entirely) to finish 15 games over .500 and give a good showing in the playoffs before losing to Puebla in the LMB South finals. Then they lost their manager.Marco Antonio Vazquez replaces Eddie Diaz as manager (Diaz will scout full-time for Tampa Bay in 2011) and takes over a decent team, including an offense that hit .313 with gap power and a pitching staff that tossed seven shutouts but allowed too many baserunners. A lot of skippers have started with less.
Guerreros RF Christian Quintero (.317/12/77) led with only a dozen dingers but five players had 22 or more doubles. C Erick Rodriguez (.327/10/61) may be the Liga’s best backstop, 3B Victor Mercedes (.336/8/81) has been productive and DH Juan Canizales (.301/10/52) keeps telling Father Time “Not yet!”
Oaxaca’s pitching is not their strength. Rodolfo Gonzalez (10-6/4.89), Rolando Valdez (10-4/5.87) and Serfio Velazquez (9-4/4.41) combined for 29 wins and a 5.02 ERA. Sort of says it all right there.
Puebla’s move to the North will help, but the Guerreros will live by their hitting. Pitching will keep Oaxaca out of the LMB Finals.
-Copyright 2011
2 comments:
It should be noted that the Warriors have the most hitter-friendly ballpark in Mexican league. They have an average 13,29 runs scored in their home games, while it's only 9,92 away - a discrepancy of almost 3.5 runs. So no surprise they seem to have great hitters and weak pitching.
Puebla's a pretty chummy place for hitters, too, and so is Mexico City. At the other end of the spectrum, Merida (Yucatan) has always been a tough place for power hitters.
As much as I've been saying how competitive the LMB North is during these previews (and the strongest team do seem to be there, especially with Puebla joining them), the South playoff picture is REALLY wide open because none of the teams there stand out.
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