Slugger Matt Clark hitting stride with Acereros

When massive (6'5" and 230 pounds) Matt Clark signed with Monclova, the former NCAA home run leader was expected to add light-tower power to the middle of the Acereros batting order.  Thus far, the former LSU star and one-time U.S. National Teamer has not disappointed.

Clark belted three homers Sunday in Monclova's 13-12 loss to Monterrey in 12 innings before nearly 22,000 spectators at Estadio Monterrey, bringing his season total to nine longballs (tied for third in the Mexican League with Aguascalientes' Jesse Castillo and Alex Liddi of Tijuana).  Two of those homers were launched in the first and third innings against Monterrey starter Javier Solano, one of Mexico's top pitchers who'd won his last three starts.  Clark ended up with six RBIs on the day, with half of them accounted for via that three-run bomb in the initial entrada.  A risk/reward type of batter, Clark also struck out in his three other plate appearances.  He's now batting .317 and his 41 RBIs are tied for second with Tijuana's LMB home run leader Corey Brown.

This is not the first go-round in Mexico for the well-travelled Clark, who went 3-for-15 with a homer for Laguna last season before the Vaqueros let him go in early May.  He'd begun 2016 in spring training with the eventual world champion Chicago Cubs, who released him in late March after signing Clark as a free agent one month earlier and went on to spend another month in Japan after leaving Torreon.  Clark's unsettled 2016 season was emblematic of what has been a peripatetic career dating back to his college days.

The son of former MLB pitcher Terry Clark (who was mostly a reliever for seven teams between 1988 and 1997), Matt attended high school in Rancho Cucamonga, California before enrolling at UC-Santa Barbara in 2005.  He spent one year with the Gauchos, transferred to Riverside CC for his sophomore season (where he was a Juco All-American), then signed on at Louisiana State as a Junior for the 2008 campaign.  Clark found Baton Rouge to his liking, tying Georgia's Gordon Beckham for the NCAA D1 home run title with 28 apiece.  Clark was drafted in the 12th round by San Diego that June and signed with the Padres.  He'd been picked a year earlier in the 28th round by Pittsburgh, but chose to attend LSU instead.

Beginning with Eugene in the Class A Northwest League, Clark worked his way through the Padres system for five seasons, including two years at AAA Tucson.  Despite hitting 97 homers and driving in 358 runs over his four full seasons with an accrued .282 average (picking up a couple of organizational All-Star selections along the way, but also striking out 509 times), he never got the call to report to San Diego beyond an invite to the Padres 2012 camp in Arizona.

After he was released from the Tucson roster a year later, Clark played in 2013 for the Chunichi Dragons of Japan, where he socked 25 homers and collected 70 ribbies in 132 but only hit .238.  Still, that was enough for the lefty-hitting first baseman to be signed by the Mets for 2014.  After spending time at AA Binghamton, Clark was let go but quickly picked up by the Brewers, who assigned him to AAA Nashville for the rest of the MiLB schedule.  Between Binghamton and Nashville, Clark hit .308 with 26 homers and 83 RBIs over 120 games before his September call-up to Milwaukee.  Clark's month in MLB resulted in a .185 average with three homers in 16 games with the Brewers, who then farmed him out to Colorado Springs for 2015.

After a good year with the Sky Sox, Clark chose to file for free agency and eventually signed with the Cubs.  Following his spring training release from Chicago and his month with Laguna, he returned to Japan with the Orix Buffaloes, but only batted .172 with a couple homers before being cut loose on July 6.  Clark remained out of pro ball until Monclova signed him in early March.  Thus far, he's been a linchpin of the Acereros batting order and has played respectably in right field, with one error on 30 chances over 23 games.  Never a speedstar (with one stolen base this decade), the massive Clark has generally been able to handle himself defensively in the outer garden alongside speedy centerfielder Willy Taveras well enough to keep him there in the lineup.

So what's next for Matt Clark after his three-homer outburst Sunday?  His place in the middle of the Monclova order under manager Wally Backman should be secure enough as one of the Mexican League's top power hitters this season.  On the other hand, he's playing under an owner who has all but mandated that the Acereros win his hometown's first-ever LMB pennant and a manager who's indicated his stay south of the border will only last as long as it has too.  In short, Clark's situation in Mexico is somewhat unsettled, but that's something he's already dealt with over more than a decade of college and pro baseball.  One suspects he's taking his experiences with the Steelers in stride.  In this game (and in this Liga), that's almost a prerequisite.

2016 BBM Summer Awards Pitcher of the Year: Yoanner Negrin, Yucatan

The Yucatan Leones posted the best record in the Mexican League this summer with a 77-33 mark (winning 35 of 52 road games) before advancing to the LMB South Division Championship Series against eventual champions Puebla.  While BBM Manager of the Year Willie Romero had some timely hitters like in his everyday lineup like Jesus Valdez, Luis Alfonso Garcia and Corey Wimberly, the Leones were clearly a pitching-dependent team in 2016.  And no pitcher in the Liga was more dependable than starter Yoanner Negrin.

The 32-year-old Cuban righty registered one of the best campaigns for pitchers in recent memory, winning 18 of 19 regular season contests.  His lone loss came May 1 against Puebla at home in Merida, a 5-4 defeat in which Negrin allowed five runs on 10 hits and three walks over 5.1 innings.  Otherwise, he was as automatic as the sunrise, winning all but three no-decisions for his 21 other starts.  Negrin's 18 wins were the most since Danny Rios went 18-5 for Union Laguna in 2001 (throwing an incredible 19 complete games among his 26 starts that year).

Negrin ended the schedule with 141.1 innings pitched, striking out 92 batsmen (tied for ninth in the LMB) and walking 37.  He tossed four complete games, three of them shutouts (both league highs), and his 1.07 WHIP was third behind Monclova's departed Josh Lowey and hard-luck Acereros starter Hector Velazquez. Negrin kept it up in the postseason, winning three of four starts (including two wins over Campeche in the first round).  In 24.2 playoff innings, he flashed a 1.86 ERA with 15 strikeouts.

Yoanner Negrin Perez was born April 29, 1984 in Havana.  According to an August interview with the Merida-based Sipse website, Negrin said he loved baseball as far back as he could remember, crediting his father for helping him learn the game.  After first playing first base and shortstop, he tried pitching at age 13.  "I was rather bad," he laughed.  "I kept giving up walks.  I was on the team because my dad was the manager."  He improved to the point of beginning his Cuban National Series career at 17 with a Havana team and moving on to Matanzas at 20.  After a few seasons in the winter league, however, Negrin grew frustrated by his lack of opportunity to even try out for the powerful National Team and decided to leave the island and seek a better chance in baseball and life elsewhere, ending up in Miami.

The Chicago Cubs signed him as a 27-year-old free agent in 2011.  Negrin spent most of the next five summers in the Cubs' minor league system, with loans to Mexican League teams in Tabasco during the 2012 and 2014 seasons, showing well both times.  He suffered an elbow injury in 2015, however, and after rehabbing in Class A Eugene and AAA Iowa, Negrin was loaned to Yucatan in June and has remained since.

Similar to BBM Batter of the Year Diory Hernandez of Aguascalientes, nobody could have foreseen Negrin's incredible 2016 season.  His five-year MiLB career record after the 2015 season was a pedestrian 19-21 in 129 appearances (44 of them starts), although he had a respectable 3.67 ERA and was 8-for-12 in saves opportunities out of the bullpen.

If Lowey had remained in Monclova instead of signing in July with the Korean Baseball Organization's KT Wiz (where he's 3-5 with a 5.98 ERA after his 12th start Tuesday), he would have been in the running for this award.  Lowey was 13-3 with a LMB-leading 1.65 ERA when he departed and his 131 K's still led the loop. Puebla closer Chad Gaudin had a great year for the Pericos, saving 33 games and winning two more with a 1.64 ERA in 44 trips from the pen.  However, there's just no way you can choose anyone but a guy who goes 18-1 over a 110-game season (projecting to 26 triumphs over 162 contests) and wins two more in the playoffs to make it an even 20.  This one was easy.  Finally.

Kyle Farnsworth signs with Reynosa, tosses two scoreless frames against Aguascalientes

Kyle Farnsworth's long strange trip through the world of sports has taken him to Reynosa, where the 16-year MLB veteran reliever signed a contract with the Mexican League Broncos last weekend.

This is not the Wichita native's first go-round in the Liga.  Farnsworth spent part of last season in Puebla, where he was 2-1 with a 2.04 ERA in 17 appearances for the Pericos.  Prior to signing with Reynosa, the 6'4" 230-pound righty was playing minor league amateur football with the Orlando Phantoms of the Florida Football Alliance.

The sometimes-controversial Farnsworth has been one of the more well-traveled players in the Majors since his debut with the Chicago Cubs in 1999, going 5-9 with a 5.09 ERA as a starter that year before being converted into a middle reliever the following spring.  After six seasons calling Wrigley Field home, Farnsworth's journey through the bigs took him to Detroit, Atlanta, New York, Detroit (again), Kansas City, Atlanta (again), Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay and New York (again, this time with the Mets) between 2005 and 2014.  In 893 appearances during his MLB career, Farnsworth had a 43-66 record with 57 saves, including 25 for the Rays in 2013, with a 4.26 ERA.

Farnsworth made his first appearance Sunday against Aguascalientes in Reynosa, pitching scoreless ball in the eighth and ninth innings and striking out three as the Broncos fell, 1-0.  Seventeen of his 24 pitches were strikes.

2015-16 BBM Winter Awards: Most Valuable Player

Although the Obregon Yaquis were unable to make it past the second round of the Mexican Pacific League playoffs this winter, losing in seven games to Mazatlan in their hard-fought semifinal series after losing the first two games at Estadio Tomas Gaytan (neither team would win a home game in that set), they did turn in the best overall regular season record in the circuit at 39-29, just missing the top postseason seed by a half-point to Mexicali.  That they were able to finish as well as they did despite mediocre batting and pitching means some players had to rise to the occasion when the occasion called for it, and few did it as well as Yaquis third baseman Christian Villanueva, our BBM Winter Award winner for Most Valuable Player.

The Guadalajara native finished in the LMP's Top Ten in ten different offensive categories in 2015-16, coming in sixth in the MexPac with a .322 average, tied for seventh in homers with 9, fifth in RBI's with 38, second to Mazatlan's Jeremias Pineda with 43 runs scored, second to Jose Amador with a .434 on-base percentage and third behind both Amadors in OPS at .914.  He hit better on the the road, knocking pitchers around for a .339 average with seven homers away from home while batting .302 at Tomas Gaytan.

More to the point, he was the linchpin of a lineup that had plenty of holes in it, thus seeing fewer hittable pitches as opposing pitchers were willing to nibble the corners with him and take their chances with the rest of the Yaquis order, yet still collecting timely hits throughout the campaign.  He spent 29 games at third base, fielding 82 of 87 chances cleanly for a .943 average and taking part in eight double plays from the hot corner, not Brooks Robinson territory but not the second coming of Hector Lopez either. In a season that saw no clear standout performances, Villanueva gets the slight nod for our LMP MVP.

The 24-year-old Villanueva was signed as a free agent by Texas in August 2008 and spent four years in the Rangers system before moving to the Cubs organization in mid-2012 in a trade that sent pitcher Ryan Dempster to Arlington.  Ranked eighth among prospects in the Cubbies minors heading into the 2013 season, Villanueva hit .261 with 19 homers and 72 RBI's at AA Tennessee that year but suffered a downturn in 2014 by batting a combined .230 with 10 roundtrippers between the Smokies and AAA Iowa.  He reversed his fortunes somewhat last summer by cracking 18 homers with 88 ribbies in Des Moines to go with a .259 average.  In all, Villanueva has averaged 16 homers and 75 RBI's over the past five minor league seasons and while he has zero chance of unseating Kris Bryant in Wrigley Field, he's on Chicago's 40-man roster and will challenge former Atlanta third sacker Tommy La Stella for the backup role.

This winter was his fourth in the MexPac, all with Obregon, and clearly his best.