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| Start of last week's brawl in Tijuana |
The
reeling Aguascalientes Rieleros may have a 10-19 record after losing seven of
their last ten games, but the Rieleros seem to be making up in
feistiness what they lack in wins. The Mexican League team made
headlines across the country after manager Luis Carlos Rivera
bloodied shortstop Richy Pedroza during a June 12 clubhouse
confrontation that also involved third baseman Michael Wing. All
three were fined by the LMB, Pedroza was placed on the team's reserve
list shortly after the incident and Wing didn't return to the lineup
until last week.
The
Railroaders found themselves in another dust-up last Wednesday, this
time on the playing field. During the eighth inning of a 5-3 loss in
Tijuana, Aguascalientes reliever Brandon Quintero drilled Toros
batter Gabriel Gutierrez with a pitch, precipitating a heated
discussion and an ensuing bench-clearing brawl between the two teams.
While replays show the usual milling around seen in such
confrontations in baseball, the LMB office in Mexico City saw fit to
fine and/or suspend 11 combatants from both teams, with the two
principle figures receiving stiff sentences.
For the
Rieleros, Quintero was suspended six games and fined 28,340 pesos for
plunking Gutierrez but starting pitcher Ernesto Zaragosa was sent to
the cooler for eight games on top of his 28,340 peso fine for coming
back on the field to punch and kick Toros players during the fight.
Catcher Francisco Cordoba was fined 14,470 pesos and suspended two
games for hitting Tijuana's Jose Guadalupe Chavez after the latter
was hit by a pitch in the sixth inning, while manager Rivera was
fined 14,470 pesos and suspended one game for ordering his pitchers
to throw at Toros batters.
Interestingly,
Tijuana came out on the short end even though they were the targets.
Gutierrez was suspended ten games and fined 45,510 pesos after trying
to hit Rieleros players with his bat and batting helmet while Chavez
was ordered to sit out two games and pay 14,470 in fines for punching
Cordoba in the sixth frame. Three other Toros players (Ricky Alvarez,
Junior Lake and Peter O'Brien) were each fined 14,470 pesos and
suspended for one game while pitcher Brennan Bernardino was fined
7,085 pesos but not suspended for throwing punches after things had
seemingly calmed down.
Two
days before the Rieleros and Toros engaged in their tag-team bout,
the Yucatan Leones decided to make a change by jettisoning manager
Geronimo Gil. The decision to let the former Major League catcher go
was somewhat curious, as the Leones were 14-11 and in third place in
the LMB South standings, two games behind leaders Mexico City, when
Gil was fired (with the usual thanks and best wishes from the team's
front office). Instead, he becomes the fourth manager in Mexico to lose his job this month.
 |
| Geronimo Gil has been fired in Yucatan |
Gil
took over the Leones during the 2019 season and led them to a 24-11
record over their last 25 games, then took them to the Serie del Rey
before losing to Monclova. Yucatan began this season by winning their
first six games, but losing 11 of their next 19 contests and managing
in Mexican baseball is a “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately?”
business. Salon de la Fama member Chico Rodriguez was hired as a
bench coach the day Gil was let go, yet another curious move because
nobody was announced as the new helmsman in Merida. Rodriguez has
previously managed six different LMB teams and may be running the
team but as of Sunday, the team website has made no mention of a new
manager. Whoever the boss is, Yucatan has gone 3-3 since Gil was
removed.
While
the emphasis in the Mexican League thus far has been on the several
MLB veterans dotting team rosters, a couple of homegrown teenagers
found themselves in the spotlight last week. The San Diego Padres
have announced the signing of 19-year-old pitcher Miguel Castro, a
Guasave native whose fastball has hit 92-93 MPH. Padres scout
Emmanuel Rangel says the young right-hander projects as a starter in
the majors. Castro's LMB rights are held by the Puebla Pericos while
he's on the reserve list of Mexican Pacific League's Los Mochis
Caneros.
Another
teen hurler, Alejandro Armenta, made his debut for Quintana Roo last
Tuesday just days before his 17th birthday. A product of Los Mochis,
Armenta started the Tigres' series opener in Cancun against Puebla
and tossed a scoreless first inning, striking out the Pericos' David
Olmedo-Barrera for the second out. The 5'9” 188-pound righty threw
strikes on 13 of his 19 pitches before being pulled for veteran
Javier Solano at the beginning of the second frame.
In the
Mexican League standings, Tijuana has won eight of their past ten
games to go to 23-8 on the season, pulling into a tie for first in
the LMB with Guadalajara. Defending champion Monclova is third at
20-13 while Saltillo holds fourth with a 19-14 mark. Mexico City has
a two-game lead over Puebla in the LMB South with a 21-10 record. The
Pericos are 19-12, Yucatan is third at 17-14 while Veracruz is a
half-game behind the Leones at 17-15.
Saltillo's
Henry Urrutia has taken the lead in the batting race with a .441
average, seven points ahead of Durango's Tito Polo (.434). Three
players are tied for the home run lead with 10 longballs each: Peter
O'Brien (Tijuana), Xavier Batista (Leon) and Puebla's Olmedo-Barrera.
O'Brien's Toros teammate, Leandro Castro, is well in front of the RBI
derby with 44, ten more than Urrutia. Isaac Rodriguez of Tijuana
leads with 15 stolen bases.
Guadalajara's
Masaru Nakamura (5-0) tossed six innings of one-run ball in a 6-3 win
over Union Laguna last Wednesday to become the LMB's first five-game
winner. Monterrey's Matt Tenuta's 1.50 ERA is tops among Liga
starters and three closers are tied for first with nine saves apiece:
Guadalajara's Fernando Cruz, Jenrry Mejia of Laguna and Tijuana's
Fernando Rodney. Rodney (1.13) is the only one of the trio with an
ERA under 5.00.
DOMINICANS
WIN PUEBLA QUALIFIER, EARN FINAL OLYMPIC BERTH
The
Dominican Republic has emerged from the Final Olympic Qualifier as
the sixth and final member of the field that will compete for a gold
medal at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The Dominicans defeated
Venezuela, 8-5, Saturday at Estadio Hermanos Serdan in Puebla, where
the Qualifier was moved after the World Baseball Softball
Confederation determined that conditions at the original venue in
Taiwan were unsafe for hosting the event. Taiwan's national team
later pulled out of the Qualifier in Puebla for similar reasons. With
the win, the DR will face Mexico in the Olympic opener on July 30.
CourtesyRunner.com
editor Bob Broughton, a Canadian now residing in Guanajuato, attended
the final three days of the Qualifier in Puebla and wrote this report
on Saturday's final game:
 |
| Dominican squad heading to Tokyo |
The
Dominican Republic (4-0 in the tournament) defeated Venezuela (2-2)
8-5 at the Estadio de Béisbol Hermanos Serdan in Puebla, Mexico. The
Dominican Republic took the sixth and final spot in the Tokyo
Olympics with a six-run fourth inning.
Venezuela
opened the scoring in the top of the second inning with a three-run
“no doubt” home run in the top of the second inning by RF Diego
Rincones (Giants organization).
Venezuela
loaded the bases with two out in the top of the third inning. DR
relieved starter RHP Radhamés Liz (Leones de Yucatán) with RHP Jhan
Mariñez, and he got a fly out to leave the bases loaded.
The
bottom of the third started with a double play. Venezuela starter LHP
Yapson Gomez (Tigres de Quintana Roo) walked CF Emilio Bonifacio, and
was replaced by RHP Eduardo Paredes. Paredes was greeted with a
two-run home run by DH Melky Cabrera, and Venezuela led 3-2 after
three innings.
DR
took the lead for good in the bottom of the fourth. The inning
started with singles by 1B Juan Francisco and LF Johan Mieses (Red
Sox organization). Francisco scored on a double by 3B Diego Goris
(Aguilas de Cibaenas). SS Ramón Torres then hit a popup that was
mishandled by SS Engelb Vielma (Navigantes de Magallanes) and Mieses
scored, giving DR a 4-3 lead. The play was reviewed for possible
baserunner interference, but Torres was given the hit. C Charlie
Valerio (Sioux Falls Canaries) hit an RBI double. The play at second
was close, but it was reviewed, and Valerio was ruled safe. 5-3 DR.
The
winning run came on a two-RBI single by 2B Gustavo Nuñez (Tigers
organization). Bonifacio hit a sacrifice fly for the sixth run of the
inning, and DR led 8-3 after four innings.
 |
| Dutch pitcher Tom de Blok |
In
the top of seventh, DH Danry Vásquez (Rieleros de Aguascalientes)
hit what appeared to be an inside-the-park home run but after a
review, it was ruled a ground rule double. Vasquez scored anyway on a
single by LF Alexander Palma (Brewers organization). SS Vielma made a
great play on a ground ball by Mieses to end the bottom of the
seventh, with DR up 8-4.
In
the top of the eighth, Julio Rodríguez (Mariners organization) made
a great catch in right field on fly ball by RF Diego Rincones (Giants
organization). It saved a run, and the inning ended with a double
play.
In
the top of the ninth, Venezuela got one more run on an RBI double by
Vasquez with two out. The game ended on a ground out, with a final
score of 8-5.
LHP
Darío Álvarez (Algonderos de Unión Laguna), who came in in the top
of the fourth and retired all three batters that he faced, got the
win. RHP Harold Chirinos (Brewers organization), who came in in the
fourth inning and didn’t record an out, got the loss. Cabrera
finished 1-for-4 with a home run and two RBI. Goris finished 2-for-4
with a double and an RBI. Palma went 3-for-5 with an RBI for
Venezuela. Attendance was approximately 2,691.
PLAYER
NOTES:
*Torres
played two seasons for the Royals, had a career average of .225.
*Cabrera
played 15 seasons in the Major Leagues with nine teams; he was an
All-Star in 2012.
*Liz
played four seasons in the Major Leagues, mostly for the Orioles. His
career record was 7-12, 6.94 ERA.
*Mariñez
played five seasons in the Major Leagues with seven teams, had a
record of 1-5, 3.56 ERA.
*Bonifacio
played 12 seasons in the Major Leagues with eight teams, had a career
average of .256.
*Francisco
played six seasons in the Major Leagues with four teams, career
average of .236, 48 home runs.
*Álvarez
played four seasons in the Major Leagues with three teams, had a
record of 6-1, 5.06 ERA.
*Paredes
played two seasons with the Angels, had a record of 0-1, 5.53 ERA, 32
strikeouts.
*Vielma
had a cup of coffee with the Orioles, batted .143.
*Netherlands pitcher Tom de Blok signed with Puebla (LMB) after concluding in qualifier.
PROCESO:
CASTRO DETAILS OLYMPIC TEAM FRUSTRATIONS
Myriad
issues surrounding the Mexican baseball team's pending trip to Japan
for the Tokyo Summer Olympics have focused a spotlight on the lack of
cohesion between the team and federal organizations charged with
making sure their historic first appearance in Olympic competition is
properly funded.
Beatriz
Pereyra's deep dive in the June 13 issue of Proceso
includes an interview with fired Verdes Grande manager Juan Castro.
The following is an edited Google translation of the Pereyra piece, a
long and at times convoluted) take on the situation, but a necessary
one because it delves into something more layered than a Walla Walla
onion:
 |
| Phillies coach Juan Gabriel Castro |
The
lack of public resources to cover the expenses of preparing the
Olympic baseball team has already caused a crisis that led to the
firing of manager Juan Castro, but does not solve the execrable way
the president of the Federation Mexicana de Beisbol (FEMEBE), Enrique
Mayorga, and the director of the National Commission for Physical
Culture and Sports (CONADE), Ana Guevara, have behaved with the
Mexican team.
Even
though President Andrés Manuel López Obrador personally
commissioned her to monitor the baseball team on time, Guevara did
not dispersed government money or attend to the needs of a team that
aspires to win a historic medal for the country.
Less
than 15 days before the Mexican nine travels to Japan, none of the
players on the long list (where there are around 105 names) has
undergone an anti-doping control applied by the National Anti-Doping
Committee (CNA) or by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) so those
who are clean will attend.
Given
the failure of Mayorga and Guevara, the Mexican Baseball League (LMB)
has already taken control of the national team, but no one knows if
the money required to cover expenses will be provided by the club
owners or if, finally, CONADE will put government resources on the
table.
For
now, the LMB is operating with the expenses that are being generated,
the clubs will loan their players and pay them as if they were
playing normally in the season and sponsors New Era will provide the
uniforms and equipment.
On
Friday, June 11, the LMB announced that the FEMEBE appointed as
manager of the Olympic team Benj Gil, skipper of the Guadalajara
Mariachis. Gil is a former Major League Baseball player who has won
four titles in five seasons of winter baseball with the Culiacan
Tomateros, two of them consecutive.
Gil,
48, will lead the first representative of Mexico in Olympic baseball
and fight for a medal against Japan, South Korea, Israel, the United
States and the Dominican Republic, who won the recent final qualifier
in Puebla.
The
schism in the baseball team began long before June 5, when, through a
telephone link, both Mayorga and the president of the LMB, Horacio de
la Vega informed manager Juan Gabriel Castro and Olympic team GM
Kundy Gutiérrez that they would be relieved of their positions.
On
that Saturday night, the team that both Castro and Gutierrez had been
building for months broke. Unhappy about a host of unfulfilled
promises, including the payment of their fees and the coaching staff
they have been working with, Castro and Gutiérrez demanded (not
without reason) the money as well as help with a series of procedures
such as FEMEBE paying a bond owed to the Major League Baseball office
to be able to negotiate the loan of Mexican players who belong to MLB
organizations.
More
than once the duo threatened to not deliver information that,
scratching with their own nails, they generated during long hours of
work. They also showed the possibility of not attending the Olympic
joust.
Despite
being the head of national teams in the country, Enrique Mayorga
acted as a “zero to the left.” He was not able to arrange for
CONADE to give him the money budgeted for the Olympics nine but he
also did not want to accept in the FEMEBE account the 2.5 million
pesos that owners of five LMB clubs offered as a loan until the
government resources were released.
Thus,
in the face of Mayorga's ineffectiveness, the LMB wanted to solve the
problem of lack of money but it couldn't. Seeing this, Castro and
Gutiérrez cut off all communication with de la Vega and decided to
solve it by taking up a collection with companies in the United
States and Mexico, which upset all parties (especially Mayorga) as it
seemed in bad taste.
“He
didn't want us to do it,” Castro said in an interview with Proceso.
“This was better because if we could collect that money, we would
no longer need the CONADE budget. We saw it as helpful that they did
not have to worry about giving us a budget, but he told us not to do
it."
The
solitary confinement began on April 30 when Castro sent a letter
telling de la Vega that they would no longer discuss anything with
him, since the LMB did not have the capacity to resolve the economic
issue.
The
silence that lasted throughout May resulted in Mayorga finally
convincing Castro and Gutiérrez to take a phone call, during which
Mayorga had De La Vega to thank both the manager and the GM of the
selection.
 |
| Mexican Olympic Team manager Benji Gil |
Castro
says, “Mayorga turned things over to Horacio because he did not
have enough - I cannot say the word here- as manager of FEMEBE to
give us that news because we were working with him, not with the
League. Mayorga had to ask other people to tell us the news.
“We
answered everything they asked about why we no longer wanted to
continue with the national team, then they hung up on us. They never
told us clearly the reason they were going to remove us from the
national team.”
PEREYRA:
“Do you recognize that when you refused to hand over the short list
of players and other information that they felt it was blackmail;
that they conditioned your participation and that when they felt
cornered, they decided that?”
CASTRO:
“Maybe, but it was not the first time that we told them that if
they did not pay us, we would not deliver information and the list).
After they said that they were going to pay us, because the LMB was
already going to give the money, we put the members of the coaching
staff back to work and they made us deliver certain information. In
three days we collected passports, as there were players who didn't
have them, and Kundy moved in with his contacts at the consulates to
get the papers ready. Then, after a few days, they tell us that they
can't pay us.
“We
felt that they were using us to get the information from us. That is
why we said 'from now on, we are not going to give you anything'
because, to begin with, the WADA anti-doping tests were not carried
out to know who is clean of prohibited substances to be able to
reduce the list. Then we couldn't even talk to the managers of the
major league teams to ask the players. They (Mayorga and de la Vega)
demanded a list of 50 players and how we were going to do it without
those two conditions. That's why we said: 'If they don't pay us, we
won't give them the list,' but we couldn't do it because giving names
without the missing information would have been incorrect.”
Currently
the infield coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, Castro says they
were surprised to learn that "the team" would play two
exhibition games in Mexico City: “We told them that those games had
nothing to do with the National Team because we don't have the
players ready and the coaching staff wasn't going to be able to be
there. I found out that it was going to be a selection of LMB players
called the 'Olympic team' and we said no. I don't know if they liked
that answer."
Castro
says that no one informed them that those games will be held at the
request of President López Obrador. “If it is something that the
president wants to do it is respected, but if I wouldn't be the
manager nor have selected players, then it is not the Olympic team.”
In
fact, to carry out those exhibition games (the opponents were
Venezuela and the Dominican Republic), LMB clubs will have to loan at
least one star player just as the first month of a season cut to 66
games is being played.
The
reason why the LMB could not lend FEMEBE the 2.5 million pesos is
because Mayorga refused to sign a loan agreement with the league to
receive the money, due to the uncertainty that CONADE would reimburse
him that money.
“After
months of battling,” Castro claimed, “Horacio told us 'I have the
money and if they'd like, I'll deposit it tomorrow.' We instantly
sent him the necessary documentation but then he told us no, it
couldn't be done like that. The only way was to deposit to FEMEBE.
Mayorga was not going to accept that and with good reason, because he
did not know if he was going to receive the funds from CONADE or if
he was going to be left with a debt."
Neither
Mayorga nor Gutiérrez did not respond to an interview request made
by this reporter while de la Vega did not want to address the issue.
In
statements with El Jonronero, a digital medium in Culiacán,
Gutiérrez spoke about what happened. Visibly annoyed, he said that
this was the end of his work with the Mexican national team because
he was tired of always having to struggle with money and organization
problems.
The
most recent thing he suffered was that Mayorga accepted that
Gutierrez and two members of the team's coaching staff would travel
to Florida to attend the Olympic qualifier, where the United States
won their ticket to Tokyo. However, Mayorga only bought their air
tickets and did not provide the threesome a per diem for the trip.
Under these conditions, they all refused to get on the plane, since
there would be a precedent that they'd have to pay out of their own
pockets for hotels, meals, ground transportation and other expenses
while FEMEBE would not reimburse that money.
 |
| FEMEBE president Enrique Mayorga |
Gutiérrez
also questioned that how it is possible that since November 2019,
when the national team qualified for the Olympic Games during the
Premier12 tournament after having beaten the United States twice,
neither CONADE nor FEMEBE had paid a single peso but now there is
money for exhibition games in Mexico City.
“Mayorga
is responsible for the exhibition games, how they work and about the
resources used,” Gutierrez told El Jonronero. “You have to be
transparent. The one who bears all the responsibility is Mayorga and
if it was not with government money he should have sought the
resources, but he remains stuck. In his meetings he talks about what
he does with his annual budget, but where are his bank accounts? Let
his associates know. Since Mayorga joined FEMEBE, it is the same:
What has he done to do this in a better way? He has the obligation to
promote baseball throughout the country.”
Finally,
Juan Castro explains that his intention and that of Gutiérrez was to
try to do things in the correct way and in order so that there is a
solid structure and that the players, from the minor teams to the
major, attend with pleasure. to the calls and see that there is a
strong system that works well.
“We
never did anything with a negative intention, but to make things
change for the better. The decision has already been made and can no
longer be reversed. I do not agree, it was unfair, but they decided
and it is respected,” concludes Castro.
