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BBM 2017 Summer Awards: Manager
of the Year / Pitcher
of the Year Batter
of the Year / Playoff
MVP
Changing
of the Guard: What Is Mexican Baseball's Future?
In
Radical Departure, LMB to Play 2 Seasons in 2018
BBM
Summer Awards: MVP
I've mentioned a
couple times that I was facing some mighty
tough choices in picking the Summer Bammys this year, but none was
harder than
Most Valuable Player. There were several
standout performances this season in the Mexican League, only some of
which BBM
has already highlighted this week, but the MVP award (to me) boiled
down to
three players: Tijuana centerfielder
Corey Brown, Aguascalientes first baseman Jesus "Jesse" Castillo and
Mexico City shortstop Ramon Urias. Of
all the Bammys I've considered since 2010, I agonized over this one
more than
any of the others and even broke down offensive and defensive stats for
each
player AND their respective teams to try determine who contributed the
most to
their club's success. It's taken me
until literally minutes before I started typing this piece to decide,
but I'm
going with Urias.
There are such
good arguments for all three men. Tijuana,
of course, is this year's LMB
champion and Brown was perhaps the main cog in the Toros machine. He batted .291, his 24 homers were second in
Liga to Saltillo's Rainel Rosario's 26 and finished fifth with 85 RBIs. In addition, Brown was very effective on the
basepaths, stealing 19 bases in 21 attempts to just miss being the sole
member
of the loop's 20/20 Club in 2017.
Defensively, he was an adequate centerfielder, hauling in 214
fly balls
and throwing out four baserunners for a .982 fielding percentage with a
2.10
range factor. Brown also played in this
year's LMB All-Star Game at Campeche.
While it was his first such contest in the LMB, Brown previously
played
four midseason classics in the International, Texas and Midwest Leagues. Despite his relatively-low batting average,
he was my pick until Wednesday night, when I began considering Jesse
Castillo.
Aguascalientes
was the surprise team in the Liga's regular
season this summer, winning 64 of 110 games to pull away from Union
Laguna and
Mexico City for fourth place in the LMB North, then provided perhaps
the
strongest opposition Tijuana faced in the playoffs before falling in
six games
in the division semis. Rieleros manager
Homar Rojas had to contend with a budget-limited roster along with the
vagaries
any skipper will encounter over a season, but the one constant was
Castillo. The veteran first sacker hit a
rock-solid
.342 with 20 homers and 82 RBIs while matching Brown with 79 runs to
finish in
the top ten in all four categories along with on-base percentage
(.435),
slugging percentage (.548) and OPS (.548).
Castillo also acquitted himself well at first with a .994
fielding
percentage over 773 chances, including 712 putouts, 56 assists and a
9.72 range
factor. He played in his seventh
All-Star Game this summer and was named its Most Valuable Player. While Jose Vargas combined with Castillo to
form a lethal 1-2 punch, the latter was clearly the most important
player in
Aguascalientes' unexpected success. A
legit MVP candidate, for sure. But then
on Thursday afternoon, I turned my attention to Ramon Urias.
The Diablos'
wunderkind shortstop (he turned 23 in June) was
able to carry his team to a 57-54 record and coming within four games
of
forcing a postseason play-in game against Aguascalientes despite a
pitching
staff with a 5.06 ERA and a number of injuries among Red Devils'
position
players. While just missing the batting
derby's top ten list (he was 12th at .340), Urias met that standard in
several
other offensive categories, leading the LMB with 91 runs scored along
with 132
hits (tied for 10th), 29 doubles (tied for 7th), 19 homers (tied for
6th), 79 RBIs
(8th), 224 total bases (tied for 4th), a .433 on-base percentage (5th),
a .577
slugging percentage (4th) and 1.011 OPS (2nd).
He played most of his defensive time (65 games) at short but
also spent
45 contests at second base, with a combined .967 fielding average in
530 total
chances, contributing 203 putouts, 309 assists and taking part in 79
double
plays (two fewer than Castillo) for a combined range factor of 4.65
over the
two positions. Although the Escarlatas
missed the playoffs a second
year in a row (after reaching the postseason every year between 1984
and 2015),
those are numbers impossible to ignore.
As you can see,
there's not a lot to create much separation
among those three players, so I started comparing their individual
stats with
their team's overall stats and while I'll spare you that breakdown, it
appeared
rather clearly to me that Urias meant more to the Diablos Rojos than
Brown did
to the Toros and even Castillo did to the Rieleros.
While Brown and Castillo had stats similar or
even below their respective team's, Urias' were better (some
significantly)
than his teammates were accruing while working behind a pitching staff
clearly
the lesser to Tijuana's and Aguascalientes'.
Adding in the fact that he was only 22 when his breakout season
opened
(Brown is 31 while Castillo is 34) and that being on a non-contending
team
didn't hurt another shortstop named Ernie Banks win TWO consecutive
National
League MVPs in the late 1950's, I've finally determined Urias is my top
LMB
player for 2017.
For being such a
tender age, Urias has completed his seventh
year as a pro. He spent two years in the
Dominican Summer League after signing with Texas as a 16-year-old free
agent in
November 2010 (batting .213 in 2011 and .268 in 2012) before landing
with
Mexico City in 2013. After batting an
even .300 in 12 sporadic appearances that year, Urias took over the
Diablos'
shortstop job in 2014 and hit .262 in the regular season before raking
pitchers
for a .393 average with a homer over nine games as the Diablos had the
Liga's
best regular-season record and swept their way through the playoffs for
their
16th LMB pennant. He hit .351 with 10
homers in 2015 and was at .301 in 2016 before a June 22 injury in a
game against
Carmen ended his season early.
As major league
scouts have also likely noticed, Urias
appears to have recovered nicely.
BBM MOST
VALUABLE PLAYER WINNERS
Summer
2010 Willis Otanez, Puebla
Winter 2010-11
Justin Christian, Los Mochis
Summer 2011
Luis Terrero, Mexico City
Winter 2015-16
Christian Villanueva, Obregon
Summer 2016
Cesar Tapia, Puebla
Winter 2016-17
Hector Velazquez, Navojoa
Summer 2017
Ramon Urias, Mexico City