VERACRUZ' UNSWORTH SIGNS WITH TAIWANESE TEAM

Dylan Unsworth: Goodbye, Mexico

    As Mexican League teams continue to tweak their rosters with just none games remaining in the 2021 regular season, a pair of transactions made across the Pacific Ocean may have an effect on how two LMB teams fare during the postseason.

    Veracruz pitcher Dylan Unsworth has been place on the Aguilas' reserve list, allowing him to sign a contract with the Fubon Guardians of the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan. The 28-year-old South African had announced his presence with authority during his first Liga season with the expansion Aguilas, tossing the loop's only no-hitter of current campaign (dominating the powerful Mexico City Diablos Rojos on May 28 with a 75-pitch performance in an 8-0 win) en route to a 4-0 record over eight starts during which he walked just four batsmen over 42 innings while striking out 27. His 2.57 ERA was leading the LMB after his last start earlier this month.

    The former Mariners farmhand had signed to pitch for Puebla in 2020 but never saw a regular season inning after the campaign was canceled due to the pandemic. Unsworth joins the Taipei-based Guardians following the releases of former MLB pitchers Manny Banuelos and J.C. Ramirez earlier this month. Banuelos is on the Mexican roster at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo while Ramirez (who was let go for “personal reasons”) has joined Mexico City. The loss of Unsworth will no doubt harm a Veracruz pitching staff whose ERA was 5.27 even with the righty on the team. The top starter for the Aguilas, who are in a five-way battle for second place in the LMB South and will likely secure a playoff berth this week, is now likely Jorge Martinez, a 36-year-old Cuban with a 3-2 record and 5.06 ERA over ten starts.

    Meanwhile, former LMB hurler Mitch Lively has been let go by his CPBL team, the ChinaTrust Brothers of Taichung. The well-traveled 6'5” right-hander arrived in Taiwan during the 2018 season and had some good moments for the Brothers his first three seasons, going 23-20 between 2018 and 2020 with a 3.66 ERA in 68 games (55 of them starts). This year, however, the 35-year-old Californian had an 8.35 ERA with a 1.88 WHIP over 36.2 innings at the time of his release.

    After making his pro debut in 2007 with the Rockies' Casper Rookie affiliate, Lively spent seven years in the Giants system (including 2012-14 at AAA Fresno) and one-plus year in the Nationals organization before becoming a baseball globetrotter. He pitched for Japan's Nippon Ham Fighters in 2015 and played for three Mexican League teams between 2016-17 (going 9-4 with a 2.26 ERA for Laguna, Reynosa and Leon) before heading to Taiwan. 

    Lively also pitched five seasons of winterball in Venezuela from 2012-17 and for Mazatlan of the Mexican Pacific League between 2017 and 2020, going 18-4 for the Venados with a sub-3.00 ERA all three years and winning Pitcher of the Year honors in 2018-19. Lively's LMB rights appear to still belong to Leon, which means he could land with the Bravos intramural parent club in Monterrey if he chooses to seek work in Mexico, since the Sultanes are only a half-game out of a playoff berth.

Mitch Lively: Goodbye, Guardians

    Guadalajara (39-15) holds a solid six-game lead over 34-22 Tijuana in the LMB North, with Monclova (33-24) and Saltillo (32-25) both within striking distance of the Toros. With six teams per division qualifying for the postseason this year, a spirited battle for the final two berths has developed among Union Laguna (25-30), Aguascalientes (23-28) and the aforementioned Monterrey (24-30). Durango (18-38) is basically out of contention.

    The LMB South regular season title is Mexico City's (36-19) to lose. Hard-charging Tabasco (20-27) has won five in a row to move into second, seven games behind the Diablos and one game ahead of Puebla (27-26), Yucatan (28-27) and Veracruz (29-28). Sixth-place Quintana Roo (28-28) is only a half-game out of third and 1.5 games behind Tabasco, which shows how tight things are in the jockeying for playoff seeding. Leon (24-33), Campeche (22-32) and Oaxaca (20-36) will all need a late win streak to get back into it.

    Leo Heras of Guadalajara is listed as the LMB batting leader with a .412 average despite missing 15 of the Mariachis' 54 games while Tito Polo of Durango (37 of 56 games) ranks second at .407. Satillo teammates Rainel Rosario and Kennys Vargas are tied with Leon's Xavier Batista for the LMB lead with 17 homers each while Leandro Castro of Tijuana has 58 RBIs to top the circuit. Quintana Roo's Reynaldo Rodriguez has 20 steals, good enough to lead Tabasco's Herlis Rodriguez and Tijuana's Isaac Rodriguez (no relation among any of them) in that category.

    Guadalajara's Masaru Nakamura got a win last week to run his record to a perfect 8-0, topping the Liga in wins while Miguel Pena (Saltillo), Edgar Torres (Mexico City) and Anthony Vizcaya (Aguascalientes) are tied for second with seven wins apiece. Logan Ondrusek of Yucatan is listed as the ERA leader at 2.38 over 45.1 innings with Tabasco's Luis Escobar (2.60 in 62.1 IP) in second. Puebla's Jose Valdez (6-0, 3.94) heads the strikeouts list with 63 in 64 innings, ahead of Dos Laredo's Jackson Stephens at 60. Fernando Rodney of Tijuana picked up another save last week to raise his Liga-leading total to 14, augmenting his 1.73 ERA. Carlos Bustamante (Monclova) and Fernando Cruz (Guadalajara) are tied for second with 13 each, although Bustamante will lose ground while pitching for Mexico in the Olympics.

    All remaining series take on added significance with two playoff races underway and only nine games left to play. The biggest upcoming midweek series may be when Tijuana visits Monterrey with the Sultanes trying to move up from seventh while next weekend's most important series will likely be in Aguascalientes, where the Rieleros host Dos Laredos in a matchup of two teams battling for their postseason lives.

MEXICAN OLYMPIANS IN FLAP OVER UNIFORM PHOTO VIOLATION

Tomateros Olympians in Tokyo

    After being a constant companion for years with Mexican Olympic baseball team manager Benji Gil, it wouldn't be a major surprise if one of the 24 roster spots had been assigned to Controversy. As it is, Controversy made the trip to Tokyo along with the players and coaches anyway and appeared in a team photo last week. Sort of.

    Eleven of the players on the Mexican roster play under Gil for the Culiacan Tomateros of the Mexican Pacific League during the winter, so the skipper of the two-time defending LMP champions thought it would be fun to post an online photo of those players (along with staff members) wearing Culiacan jerseys inside the Olympic Village beneath the five-ring Olympic logo. It's a nice picture but there's a problem: It's also against Olympic protocols.

    Rule 50 in the International Olympic Committee charter states that wearing of unsanctioned clothing or uniforms, including manufacturer logos, is prohibited. The photo, which showed those posing without masks (another protocol violation) was initially posted on Tomateros social network accounts before threats of sanctions and an outraged response by the president of the Mexican Olympic Committee was enough to have it pulled off the internet, but not before the scene was memorialized by screen grabs.

    “This is an insult to the delegation and to Olympism,” Mexican Olympic Committee president Carlos Padilla was quoted as saying in Reforma. “In this case, it's more than ignorance because they signed the letter of commitment in which they are obliged to wear only the authorized uniform.

Mexican Olympics head Carlos Padilla

    “I think this goes further and implies other types of agreements with a team with which they will act, with the corresponding legal actions. It is not a coincidence that they think they are in Disneyland,” added Padilla.

    Gil originally defended on Twitter the decision to pose his eleven Tomateros players in Culiacan jerseys as well as Mexico caps, but later deleted the posts. Hours later, the entire team posed in the same place with the official uniform. Mexico is participating in Olympic Games baseball for the first time in its history after qualifying with a third-place finish in the World Baseball Softball Confederation's Premier12 tournament in November 2019. The Summer Olympics are now underway in Tokyo following a year-long delay due to the Wuhan virus.

    Mexico is one of three nations in Group A along with host Japan and the Dominican Republic while three others comprise Group B: South Korea, Israel and the United States. The Verdes Grande play their first game against the Dominicans on Friday at 12:00 local time, after which they'll take on Japan Saturday at noon local time (with both games at Yokohama Baseball Stadium). Group play consists of one game against each member for seeding purposes in next week's Knockout Round, a convoluted eight-game format to determine the four combatants in the Bronze and Gold medal games on Saturday, August 7.

WBSC U-23 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS SET FOR SONORA

Estadio Sonora, Hermosillo

  After a yearlong delay due to the ongoing worldwide pandemic, the World Baseball Softball Confederation has rescheduled its Under-23 World Baseball Championship Tournament for September and October in Hermosillo and Obregon. Twelve nations will be competing with mostly minor league players for the U-23 crown, which was last played for in 2018, with Mexico copping the title in Colombia. Mexican outfielder Norberto Obeso was named to the tournament's Dream Team after finishing second among batters with a .500 average.

    A six-team Group A field will congregate in Obregon at Estadio Yaquis while six Group B contestants will converge on Estadio Sonora in Hermosillo for the round-robin first stage of the competition, with the opening games scheduled for September 23.

    After the first round dust settles, the top three teams from each Group will gather in Hermosillo for the Super Round, featuring crossover games against nations advancing from the opposite group added to previous results to determine seedings for the Bronze and Gold medal games on Saturday, October 2. The bottom three from each group will convene in Obregon for the Consolation Round using a similar format to determine placings from seventh through twelfth place.

    For the 2021 edition, the WBSC approved that 24-year-old players can participate due to the pandemic causing the postponement of a year of the event. Thus, players born from 1997 to 2003 may be chosen to the rosters of their respective national teams.

Estadio Yaquis, Obregon

Group A (Obregon)
Czech Republic
Mexico
New Zealand
Nicaragua
South Korea
Taiwan

Group B (Hermosillo)
China
Cuba
Germany
Japan
South Africa
Venezuela

    A schedule of games for the WBSC U-23 World Championships has not been released yet.

LMB WEIGHS SCHEDULE OPTIONS, LMP FACING SQUEEZE

Mexican League season held up at least 5 weeks

In the wake of their season openers being delayed at least five weeks due to the coronavirus panic, the Mexican League is considering options for their 2020 schedule moving forward and the Mexican Pacific League's own 2020-21 season could potentially be affected.

The LMB had planned to begin their season next Monday with defending champion Monclova hosting Monterrey, followed by a full slate of games the next evening. Instead, league president Horacio de la Vega ordered all 16 training camps closed earlier this month while pushing Opening Day back five weeks until Monday, May 11, a date not etched in stone given the uncertainty regarding efforts to combat the virus or the government's willingness to allow the LMB to have final say in their scheduling.

With that in mind, de la Vega has been trying to cobble together an alternate schedule that would save the Liga's original 102-game regular season format, something he's said he wants to do. However, that adjusted calendar could mean the Serie del Rey possibly concluding immediately prior to the beginning of the Mex Pac's regular season. In an interview with ESPN, the new league leader said, "In the scenario in which we start on May 11, we'll plan to be playing 102 games per team and finishing at the start of the Pacific season, that is, around October 12 or 14..that is the current scenario."

As noted in a Septima Entrada story, the LMB concluded their 2019 calendar on October 2, when Monclova concluded the Serie del Rey with a fourth win over Yucatan for their first pennant since entering the Liga in 1974. The LMP season opened nine days later on October 11. De la Vega says he's been maintaining contact with Mex Pac president Omar Canizales and hopes to affect the winterball circuit as little as possible, since so many players perform in both loops.

Another area of concern is the Mexican League's All-Star Weekend, originally scheduled for June 5-7 in Monclova. The event, which includes the Home Run Derby, Double Play Derby and All-Star Game, will have to have new dates assigned to reflect the late start in the overall schedule. "Let's hope that by May 11, things have improved," de la Vega told ESPN. "That's part of the conversations we've had with the different federal health authorities and we have many possible scenarios with the intention of moving forward with the 2020 season."

Mexican Pacific League president Omar Canizales

Meanwhile, Canizales is having to deal with similar uncertainties. A press release issued by the Mexican Pacific League league office in Guadalajara says, in part, "In these difficult times, the LMP is confident that with the efforts of the authorities and the community, this emergency can be overcome. Once this is achieved, our fans can return to enjoy baseball, for which we'll be prepared to do what the authorities dictate." The Mex Pac held an Assembly of Presidents meeting earlier in March, where the gathered leaders decided to wait to see what the Mexican league determines regarding an adjusted schedule before moving forward on their own 2020-21 calendar.

The LMP faces a possible squeeze for playing dates if the LMB season bumps up against their own, especially given the desire of both Major League Baseball and the Confederation of Pan American Baseball to have the Caribbean Series played in late January after decades of taking place the first week of February so the tournament doesn't bump against MLB's own training camps. The Mex Pac was already looking into revamping their playoff schedule before the coronavirus scare hit and may now be faced with an abbreviated regular season and/or postseason if they have to start later AND finish sooner.

Although Mexico's baseball writers have been sympathetic with the Mexican League's scheduling worries, some are calling for the summer circuit to scale back their regular season rather than push ahead with their original 102-game schedule. Puro Beisbol editor Fernando Ballesteros says "a 60 to 80-game schedule would be, from our point of view, the most sensible for the LMB. In fact, 80 is the optimal number of games that several club owners are looking for and to leave it permanently in a long-term project, but this year they did not want to be so drastic and developed the 102 games, subtracting 18 from the 2019 season."

Ballesteros added that the potential economic chaos in the wake of the coronavirus could make it more difficult for the average Mexican fan to afford to go to the ballpark often enough to make a 102-game schedule financially viable for LMB teams.

TOKYO OLYMPICS, INCLUDING BASEBALL, POSTPONED TO 2021

Mexican National Team celebrates win

After weeks of speculation over whether the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan would begin in July as scheduled, whether they'd take place in front of empty venues or be delayed to a later start due to the coronavirus pandemic, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe announced last week that the event will be postponed until next year. 

"Due to current conditions and by all athletes, we have proposed to postpone the event for about a year so that they can be safe," Abe said during a telephone news conference last Tuesday. The International Olympic Committee and the Organizing Committee of the 2020 Olympic Games also released a statement that given information made available by the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, IOC president Thomas Bach agreed with Abe that the Olympics should called called off for the rest of this year and instead be staged in 2021.

Baseball was on the Olympic calendar this summer as a demonstration sport after last being played at the Olympic level during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, where eight nations competed for the Gold medal won by South Korea.  Cuba took the Silver medal while the Bronze went to the United States.  This year's Olympics field was to be comprised of six nations, including first-time participants Mexico.

The Mexicans qualified for the Summer Olympics on the basis of their performance at last year's Premier12 tournament, sponsored by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.  Mexico won the Group A first round of the competition in Guadalajara by going 3-0 against the United States, Dominican Republic and The Netherlands, averaging eight runs per game while allowing a total of five tallies over the three contests.  

Mexico's Olympic baseball dreams put on hold

The six nations that advanced from Group play then converged in Japan for the Super Round, a round-robin stage in which Mexico won their first three games before losing a pair of two-run tilts to host Japan and South Korea at the Tokyo Dome.  Mexico's 3-2 win in ten innings over the United States on Efren Navarro's walk-off RBI single in the Bronze medal game on November 17 was enough to punch their ticket to the Olympics.  Japan and South Korea, who played in the Gold medal game (won by Japan, 5-3), also qualified for the Olympics.  Interestingly, only one Mexican player, outfielder Jonathan Jones, was named to the 11-man All-World Team at the conclusion of the Premier12 while the United States placed four despite finishing out of the money.

Israel also qualified for their first Olympics appearance in baseball after pulling off a surprise win in the Africa/Europe event in Italy last September.  Two more qualifying tournaments, an Americas group in Arizona consisting of nations that fell short in the Premier12 (with the winner advancing to Tokyo) and a Final qualifier in Taiwan for the sixth and final berth, have been postponed.

OBREGON, LOS MOCHIS TO CO-HOST U23 BASEBALL WORLD CUP

The World Baseball Softball Confederation has announced the sites of their 2020 Under-23 Baseball World Cup tournament.  Obregon and Los Mochis have been tabbed to co-host the event, which will be held between Wednesday, September 30 and Friday, October 9.  The selection was somewhat surprising in that while located in the middle of Mexico's prime baseball hotbed, the two agricultural centers are among the smallest markets in the ten-team Mexican Pacific League (only Navojoa and Guasave have fewer residents) and lack the kind of amenities offered in other Mex Pac cities like Guadalajara or Monterrey, where tournaments of this caliber typically end up when Mexico is the host country.

Even so, there is little doubt that the U23 Baseball World Cup will be embraced in both cities, partly because they rarely (if ever) see global events on this scale but mostly because fans in Obregon and Los Mochis have proven over time that they love a good ballgame.  While a schedule has not been released, it's expected that Group stage games in the 12-nation tournament will be shared between the two cities while Obregon will host later contests all the way through the October 9 final game. 

Estadio Emilio Ibarra Almada, Los Mochis

Los Mochis, a city of over 250,000 not far from the Copper Canyon in northern Sinaloa, is home to the Mex Pac's Caneros, who christened the recently renovated 12,000-seat Estadio Emilio Ibarra Almada last October. The ballpark's 400 million peso facelift included a total redo of the main grandstand, which now includes three levels: lower and upper box seats plus luxury boxes. Along with Guasave's Estadio Francisco Carranza Limon, the facility is the "newest" in the LMP as the league seeks to modernize all of its playing fields and leaves Navojoa's Estadio Manuel "Ciclon" Echeverria, which opened in 1970, as the last remaining non-modern facility in the league.

Home to over 400,000 residents, Ciudad Obregon (named after Revolution leader Alvaro Obregon, who later became preident of Mexico) is near the southern tip of the state of Sonora. Like Los Mochis, Obregon is an agricultural hub and is served by an international airport (Los Mochis' is for domestic flights only). The LMP Obregon Yaquis play in the 16,500-seat Estadio Yaquis, which was completed in 2016 and is considered one of the country's nicest ballparks.

Estadio Yaquis, Ciudad Obregon

Both stadiums to be used for the U23 Baseball World Cup are symmetrical: Estadio Emilio Ibarra Almada in Los Mochis has 320-foot foul lines with a straightaway center field fence of 400 feet while Obregon's Estadio Yaquis is 325 feet down each foul line and 400 feet to center field. Players and coaches will have Class AAA-level clubhouse facilities in both venues as well.

Among the 12 nations represented at the U23 Baseball World Cup, four are in Latin America: Besides host Mexico, teams from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will compete. Asia will also send four national teams from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China while Germany, South Africa, New Zealand and the Czech Republic will round out the field. New Zealand replaced Australia as Oceania's delegate squad after the Aussies pulled out of their qualifying series. Professional players are allowed to represent teams at the tournament and several Mexican Leaguers are expected to fill out much of the Mexican National Team's roster, along with minor leaguers from MLB affiliates.

Mexico won the 2018 U23 Baseball World Cup in Barranquilla, Colombia under manager Jose Enrique Reyes, the first time the country had won a world championship in the sport above the Little League level. One of Mexico's three All-World Team members that year, catcher Orlando Pina, hit .294 and belted 16 homers in 90 games for Oaxaca last summer.