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BBM 2017 Summer Awards: Pitcher
of the Year / Batter
of the Year / Playoff
MVP / MVP
Changing
of the Guard: What Is Mexican Baseball's Future?
In
Radical Departure, LMB to Play 2 Seasons in 2018
BASEBALL
MEXICO 2017 SUMMER AWARDS
Manager of
the Year: Homar Rojas, Aguascalientes Rieleros
While Pedro Mere
in Tijuana has his second career pennant to
burnish his credentials and Tim Johnson led a Puebla team with more
than 20 of
its players relocated to Monclova to an unexpected appearance in the Serie del Rey, choosing Baseball
Mexico's 2017 Summer Manager of the Year was the easiest of the five
selections
to be announced this week: Veteran skipper Homar Rojas took over a
moribund
Aguascalientes team in February and piloted the Rieleros'
bargain-basement
roster to a 64-46 record (fifth-best in the Mexican League), the team's
first
playoff berth since 2012 and was able to extend the Railroaders'
first-round
series to six games before falling to Mere's Toros.
Cobbling teams
together from shoestring budgets is nothing
new to Rojas, who learned to make do in eleven previous seasons at the
helm of
LMB franchises in Oaxaca, Reynosa, Campeche and Monclova, where he went
188-145
with three playoff berths (including a 2015 Serie del Rey appearance)
for the
Acereros between 2014 and 2016. New
owner Gerardo Bustamante, who bought the team last winter, decided he
could
find a manager who'd improve Monclova's 2016 record of 69-43 and
brought in
Wally Backman, who lasted 42 games before being fired.
Rojas, for his
part, landed on his feel in Aguascalientes in
February after also getting axed from his winter job as skipper with
the
Mexican Pacific League's Jalisco Charros when the 15-19 first-half
record the
Guadalajara team posted was deemed insufficient. The
Rieleros roster had little to recommend
going into the 2017 season, although they did have BBM's 2016 Summer
Batter of
the Year, infielder Diory Hernandez, who was coming off a .319/23/97
season
during which he led the Liga in RBIs.
Aguascalientes was sixth in the LMB North with a 53-58 record,
ending the
season under interim player-manager Saul Soto (who returned to his
player-only
role this year). The Rieleros had some
good hitters but a suspect pitching staff going into their 2017
schedule under
Rojas.
The Nuevo Leon
native oversaw a few changes in his lineup,
including the surprising early-season release of Hernandez, and struck
gold by
inserting indy ball infielder Jose Vargas, LMB veteran outfielder Dave
Sappelt
into the Rieleros' everyday lineup while adding onetime Rockies hurler
Yohan
Flande and ex-Dodgers farmhand Roy Merritt to his starting rotation and
installing onetime MLB reliever Jose Valverde as his closer. The result was a plucky team that punched
above its weight, especially in the second half of the season, and
improved
their record 11.5 games over 2016 while establishing themselves as a
very scary
fourth-place team that none of the three teams finishing ahead of them
(Tijuana, Monterrey and Monclova) wanted to draw as a playoff opponent. Attendance in Aguascalientes also improved, as
the Rieleros averaged 3,572 at 70-year-old Parque Alberto Romo Chavez,
an
increase of 19 percent over 2016's turnstile count.
After the
Rieleros were eliminated by Tijuana, the
53-year-old Rojas (who managed LMP pennant-winners with Obregon in
2007-08 and
Hermosillo in 2009-10) looked back upon the unexpected success of
Aguascalientes and lauded his players' attitude and desire during
games:
"The only thing I've heard are good things about this team, and it was
the
players who did that, "he told El Clarinete of Aguascalientes. "I'm congratulating them in the media
but I already did that in person in Tijuana, where I took away some
important
things from them. I was very satisfied
with all their work.”
So were we, and
that was due to Rojas’ steady, calm hand at
the Rieleros helm. This was not a hard
choice to make.