LMP OPENS SEASON, FANS IGNORING PROTOCOLS

Monterrey Sultanes veteran Jose Amador

    The Mexican Pacific League opened its 2020-21 season last Thursday with a full slate of five games, four with fans in the stands. Two more teams received approval to allow a limited amount of seats to be sold at home games to bring the number to eight of ten LMP franchises. The only two clubs being required to play behind closed doors are Monterrey and Jalisco, where governors of their respective states have ruled out audiences at sporting events.

    In Monterrey, the Sultanes trounced the visiting Jalisco Charros, 14-4, with no paid onlookers at Estadio Monterrey behind the big bat of veteran Jose Amador. The 41-year-old Mexicali native crashed a pair of doubles and a two-run homer in the bottom of the third inning off Jalisco starter Elian Leyva en route to a seven RBIs for the night. Another veteran, ex-Diamondback pitcher Edgar Gonzalez, was far from sharp on the mound (10 hits and 4 runs over 5 innings) but he didn't have to be as his Monterrey mates chased Leyva after three frames (9 hits, 3 walks and 8 runs) and cracked 19 safeties for the contest. Henry Urrutia had a good night in a losing cause for the Charros by collecting three hits, including a double and homer.

    The largest crowd among the four games with people in the seats was in Obregon, where 7,982 fans witnessed a 7-5 Yaquis win over Mexicali. Carlos Sepulveda had three hits, including a two-run double, and drove in three counters for the winners, but it was Tirso Ornelas' sixth-inning solo homer off Aguilas reliever Nicolas Heredia that broke a 5-5 tie in what proved the game-winning hit. Mike Choice belted a solo homer for the Eagles, who also two hits from Balbino Fuenmayor, including a double and two RBIs.

    While the home team won both above games, visitors were victorious in the other three contests. One of those were the Mazatlan Venados, who came away with a 5-2 triumph in Los Mochis. A crowd of 4,251 looked on as Ramon Rios stroked a two-run single for the Deer while Issmael Salas singled twice and drew a walk. Francisco Rios posted a strong start for the winners, allowing two hits over five shutout innings for the win. Eddy Martinez was 2-for-4 at the plate for the Caneros but Los Mochis starter Daniel Duarte was touched for five runs in five entradas, allowing five hits and walking another four to absorb the loss.

    Hermosillo took a 5-0 shutout win in Navojoa Thursday night, giving 3,107 (mostly) Mayos fans little to cheer about. Naranjeros starter Juan Pablo Oramas was sharp in the opener, sprinkling two hits and striking out eight batters over five innings for the win, sharing the whitewash with three relievers. Yadiel Hernandez socked a pair of solo homers for the Orangemen while Francisco Peguero and Luis Alfonso Cruz each went deep. Mayos opener Hector Velazquez took the defeat, but deserved a better fate. The former Red Sox hurler gave up Hernandez' first homer with two out in the bottom of the first, the only hit he would allow in five frames. Jorge Flores singled and doubled for Navojoa in the loss.

    Finally, Guasave pulled out a 6-4 road win over Culiacan in front of 7,349 spectators at Estadio Tomateros. Yadier Drake gave Algodoneros starter Thomas Dorminy offensive support with a grand slam while newcomer Erisbel Arruebarrena knocked out a roundtripper. Ramiro Pena led the Tomateros with three hits, including a two-run longball. Dorminy, a former Padres farmhand who went 7-1 for Chicago in the independent American Association this summer after stints in Australia and Taiwan, turned in five innings of two-hit scoreless ball for the Cottoneers to earn the win.

What's wrong with this picture?

    Fans in Culiacan were understandably happy to see their defending LMP champions back in action, albeit minus manager Benji Gil (who is out after testing positive for the Wuhan virus), but a few too many were willing to take being allowed to be in attendance for granted. Several were watching the games while not wearing masks and not maintaining safe distancing protocols, much of it caught on camera and later posted on social media.

    One particularly overheated Tomateros fan chose to bathe himself in beer as fans in the above tier of seating poured their cups on him as well, then doused nearby fans with beer from the bottom of one of the cups he was holding. The scene brought team owner Hector Ley down from the boxes for a chat and it's assumed that the fan is one of two who've been banned for the rest of the season after violating protocols so egregiously.

    Estadio Tomateros was not the only LMP ballpark where people in the seats were shown on social media and live television not wearing masks and sitting closer than procedures permit. Aurelio Vargas of El Fildeo reports “stadiums violating the limit of allowed capacity, no respect for healthy distances, fans without masks, small children, crowds in the entrance lines and a couple of scandalous drunks were the balance of this experiment.”

    The Mex Pac office in Guadalajara issued a press release on Friday denouncing the behavior in Culiacan and urging “all fans not to replicate this type of act and point out who is breaking protocols,” but opening night was not a good look for a circuit walking on eggshells in order to play games with live crowds during a pandemic.

MEXICAN LEAGUE TO SIGN NEW WORKING AGREEMENT WITH MLB

    As the clock ticks towards the expiration of a two-year working agreement between the Mexican League and Major League Baseball that likely cost former LMB president Javier Salinas his, job, the two sides are reportedly working on a similar document that will hopefully be on more equitable terms for the Mexican teams.

    Luis Miguel Vasavilbaso of ESPN reports that Liga president Horacio de la Vega is heading negotiations with MLB on the new pact. Although ten Mexican players were on playoff team rosters when the playoffs began earlier this month, the country is lagging behind fellow Latin American nations Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic in overall representation in MLB despite placing higher than all of them in the latest World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings released in February.

    Much of that has been due to a smaller talent pool due to baseball's secondary status to soccer in Mexico, where the latter has become the more popular sport in comparison to the other countries mentioned. MLB teams in the past have found it more expensive to sign prospects south of the border because they've had to negotiate with Mexican League teams who developed top young players (and whose rights they owned), paying the LMB team directly with a portion of the agreed-upon amount going to the player as a sort of bonus.

    According to Vasavilbaso, part of the new MLB/LMB working agreement is that all major league franchises will be able to sign Mexican players directly without restrictions. The LMB team who owns the player's rights in Mexico will be paid a percentage of the contract, essentially a reversal of the old policy. 

    What likely led to Salinas' ouster as LMB president was subsequently found in the fine print of the expiring agreement, especially one stipulation requiring a player to have been on the Mexican League team's roster for two years before the team could receive a portion of the contract the player signs with an MLB team. That policy will reportedly be dropped in the new arrangement.

MLB may play more games in Mexico

    Vasavilbaso adds that decreased tensions between the two bodies as a result of the new agreement could lead to more MLB exhibition and regular season games played in Mexico. While Monterrey has received the lion's share of such contests in the past, Mexico City's Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu was set to host a two-game regular series between Arizona and San Diego in April before the Wuhan Virus ended professional baseball across the Western Hemisphere. It's likely that MLB will make another effort to play in the capital city, while the Jalisco Charros owners have made no secret of their desire to land games in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city.

    Big league clubs might even consider holding part of their training camps at sites in places like Sonora, a baseball hotbed state bordering Arizona to the north. Mexican League teams have often trained in the Phoenix and Tucson areas in the past (including this past spring), so the concept of crossing borders for spring training is hardly new.

    Vasavilbaso said the new contract between MLB and the LMB was expected to be signed this month, but no specific date was given. The Mexican Pacific League is not part of the negotiations.

AMLO ANNOUCES TWO BASEBALL ACADEMIES IN SINALOA    

Estadio Hector Espino, Hermosillo

    Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has formally announced that two of the country's proposed federally-funded baseball academies will be in the state of Sonora. El Fildeo's Alejandra Gonzalez writes that the academies are “part of ProBeis' initiative of positioning baseball as one of the recreational and professional options for young Mexicans.”

    One of the two academies in Sonora will be located at Estadio Hector Espino in Hermosillo while the other will be in Obregon at Estadio Tomas Oroz Gaytan. Both are former longtime Mexican Pacific League ballparks that were replaced in the 2010's. The other three ProBeis facilities are slated to be in Campeche, Veracruz and Texcoco (a municipality of 259,000 located 16 miles northeast of Mexico City.

    In a statement, Lopez Obrador said, “The selection of young players will be made and in addition to receiving accommodations and food, they will be granted scholarships.” While there are a number of baseball academies in Mexico operated by teams or the Mexican League itself in such places as Monterrey, Oaxaca, Mazatlan, Monclova and Tijuana, the ProBeis academies would mark the most concerted effort by the federal government to develop young players aged 10-18.

    The plan got off to a rocky start since the March 2019 formation of ProBeis (formally titled the Office of the Presidency for the Promotion and Development of Baseball in Mexico) because of funding issues. Executive director Edgar Gonzalez experienced the labyrinthian process of how money winds its way through the corridors of government. According to Proceso, he even paid one million pesos of his own money to fund his own office until 350 million pesos via the Ministry of Public Education finally arrived months after ProBeis was formed. This year, the allotment of 280 million pesos (a pandemic-induced 20 percent reduction) made its way through the Civil Ministry's Physical Education Excellence program.

Estadio Tomas Oroz Gaytan, Obregon

    A good chunk of that money has gone towards the purchase of the old Mex Pac ballparks. The Hermosillo facility, which housed the Naranjeros from 1972 through 2012, is costing the government 511.7 million pesos while the Obregon ballpark (used by the Yaquis between 1971 and 2016) comes with a 548.7 million peso pricetag. “What I hope is that before the government is finished, the first generation will come out and if we now have many good players in the major leagues, we are going to have many more so we made the decision to buy the two stadiums,” said Lopez Obrador about the project.

    While the physical academies are being developed, ProBeis has leased existing facilities for some of its activities. The most noteworthy may be the Mexican Prospect League, which completed its second season late last month in Guadalajara with the Juan Gabriel Castro team defeating the Joakin Soria team in the playoff finals. Three LPM youngsters signed contracts with major league organizations during the course of the short season: Outfielder Alex Osuna inked a deal with Texas, pitcher Roque Gutierrez came to terms with the Los Angeles Dodgers and fellow hurler Jose Reyes signed with San Diego. Four Prospect Leaguers signed with MLB franchises in 2019.

DIABLOS OPEN NEW BALLPARK WITH LOSS TO PADRES

Full house at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu opener

While it's rarely fun to lose a lopsided exhibition baseball game to a team of prospects, players with the Mexico City Diablos Rojos may be forgiven if they were smiling after such a result last Saturday in the nation's capital.  The Red Devils were pounded, 11-1, by a collection of San Diego Padres minor leaguers but the game itself took second billing to its environs as over 20,000 fans packed the stands at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu, the Diablos' brand-new home.

The man for whom the ballpark was named (after he provided all funding for its construction) was the Man of the Hour during pregame ceremonies.  Also known as Don Alfredo, Harp addressed the capacity crowd by thanking the people who built the stands they were sitting in.  "I want to thank the more than nine thousand people who participated in the construction of this dream, the construction of the home of the Diablos Rojos," Harp said.  "With this, we show that we can do great things together.  Mexico is a championship country and we will continue to be a championship country.  I hope that together, we will enjoy our new home."

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has practically become a ubiquitous presence at baseball events south of the border as a power-broker in the sport and an ally of billionaire Harp.  AMLO was on hand for Saturday's opener and took part in the pregame ceremony.  Although Puro Beisbol reports that many in the crowd booed the country's new leader, Lopez Obrador revelled in the moment, telling those in attendance, "We will support baseball, a sport that requires intelligence, heart and a lot of passion."

The game itself was almost anticlimactic and, for all intent and purposes, settled somewhat early.  The Diablos took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the third inning when Jesus Fabela (back from his trip to Japan with the Mexican National Team) scored the stadium's first run from third base on an Adonis Garcia sacrifice fly, but the Padres roared back with four scores in the top of the fourth to take the lead.  San Diego scored four more times in the sixth, with a two-run homer by Michael Gettys giving the visitors an 8-1 lead and effectively salting the contest away.  Despite the final 11-1 score, few (if any) attendees went home disappointed.

Prior to Saturday's game (the first of two played between the two sides over the weekend), a number of Mexican players with the Padres visited with players and coaches from the Liga Olmeca, a Mexico City youth baseball organization and Little League Baseball affiliate headed by Carlos Fragoso, who has scouted for both the Red Sox and Yankees over the years while building strong ties within Mexican baseball.  In his Septima Entrada column for Solo Beisbol, writer Gilberto Ruiz Razo said that Esteban Quiroz and Luis Urias were among those San Diego players expected to spend time at the Liga Olmeca facility.  Ruiz added that Fragoso is a longstanding friend of Monterrey Sultanes co-owner Jose "Pepe" Maiz, who was a member of Monterrey's 1957 Little League World Series champions (along with Hector Torres and Angel Macias) and instrumental in Liga Olmeca's later inclusion as an LLB affiliate.


LMP LEADERS DISCUSS EXPANSION DRAFT, PLAYOFF FORMAT

Guasave ballpark will see extensive renovations

Executives from the Mexican Pacific League met in Culiacan recently to talk about developments regarding the LMP's two new teams as well as a potential change in next winter's playoff format (including the elimination of the "lucky loser" method of advancing teams who lose their first round series to the second stage of the postseason.

According to Puro Beisbol editor Fernando Ballesteros, MexPac president Omar Canizales was at Culiacan's Fiesta Inn Hotel with LMP league directors Hector Ley of Culiacan and Joaquin Vega from Los Mochis Caneros to confer with representatives from the league's two new franchises, the Monterrey Sultanes and Guasave Algodoneros.  Although the Monterrey entry will be owned by the same Multimedios group that oversees the city's Mexican League club (along with part-owner Jose "Pepe" Maiz), the LMP version of the Sultanes will be operated separately from their summer LMB counterpart.  Rosters will not carry over from one team to the other, although it's possible that some players may perform double duty without changing cities.  Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador facilitated Monterrey's entry into winter baseball to partner with Guasave, where AMLO promised the return of the MexPac during his campaign last year.

 The Algodoneros are partly owned by a group of Guasave businessmen who will operate the team, but they will be largely underwritten by Mexico City Diablos owner Alfredo Harp Helu.  Harp will be funding the majority of an offseason renovation of Estadio Francisco Carranza Limon for 120 million pesos, which is approximately US$6 million.  The ballpark was completed when Guasave joined the LMP along with Navojoa in 1970 and was used for 44 seasons (with some 2002 upgrades) before the original Algodoneros were sold to moved to Guadalajara in 2014.  It'll be expanded from 8,000 to 10,000 seats in time for October's opener.  The facility's traditional playing surface was smallish: Both foul lines are 305 feet away from home plate while the centerfield wall is a chummy 375 feet away.

Franchise fees for the respective new entries were considered with Guasave, the loop's smallest market, expected to have received a price break.  An expansion draft was also discussed and a format comparable to when Arizona and Tampa Bay joined Major League Baseball was decided upon.  Each existing Mexican Pacific League team will be allowed to protect 18 players on their current rosters.

Finally, the LMP playoffs were restructured into a three-stage competition involving the top eight teams. The league opted to align as a single entity of ten teams rather than split into two five-deam divisions while the 68-game regular season schedule was retained for 2019-20.


TOROS P BARREDA COMPLAINS ABOUT LMB'S NEW FRANKLIN BALL

Manny Barreda celebrates no-hitter for Caneros

The Mexican League is switching to Franklin baseballs this season after decades of using Rawlings balls.  The Liga announced the signing of a multiyear agreement with Franklin in February that also includes the manufacture and public sales of licensed team products and merchandise.  Franklin's new OL4000 baseball will be used.

It didn't take long for one of a group of people whose success depends on what they throw to register his concerns.  Tijuana pitcher Manny Barreda was quoted on the Hitazo site last Tuesday as saying the Mexican League had not sent the new balls to the Toros training camp in Tucson, Arizona yet.  "It's difficult.  It's not long before the season and we haven't really tested them," Barreda said.  "We don't know how they look and we don't know how it'll feel in our hands.  We don't know how it's going to work, like how our pitches will break."

A 30-year-old Arizonan who spent eight years as a reliever in the Yankees organization before becoming a starter with Los Mochis in 2016-17, Barreda subsequently authoring two no-hitters months apart in both the LMB and LMP (using 138 and 135 pitches, respectively).  He was 5-3 with a 2.63 ERA in 11 starts for Culiacan over winter after splitting last summer between the rotation and the bullpen with Tijuana.  The 5'11" righty does seem certain in advance of one likely feature of the new ball:  "We do know it'll fly farther.  It's the show that they (the Liga) want to give to the fans and we as pitchers will be affected.

Barreda doesn't think his fellow pitchers will easily adapt to the Franklin ball.  "It's something very different," he said.  "We've been pitching all our career with the Rawlings ball.  It's thrown in the minor leagues, in winter and summer.

"Now that we have to change it, we're not very happy about that."