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B a s e b a l l
M e x i c o
Saturday,
April 27, 2020
LMB
LOOKS AT JULY START; LMP OPENER IN NOVEMBER?
One of Mexico's most well-connected
baseball writers is saying that the Mexican League is eyeing a July
start to a
2020 regular season that would run into September, followed by a
postseason
that might push the winterball Mexican Pacific League's season opener
into
November.
Puro Beisbol editor Fernando Ballesteros, who
has well-placed
sources in both of Mexico's top leagues, wrote last week that reports
from
three LMB clubs indicate the country's senior circuit is hoping to get
their
Wuhan virus-delayed campaign underway in July, assuming the pandemic is
under
control by then. The federal government's extension of their "safe
distance" edict to May 30 effectively scuttled the Liga's hoped-for May
11
starting date after their initial April 6 debut in Monclova was
postponed.
The tentatively-planned
Mexican League schedule would end in September, with a full right-team
playoff
calendar potentially ending with an October 31 Game Seven of the Serie del Rey championship matchup.
According to another Ballesteros source in the Mexican Pacific League,
"The LMP would be starting on November 1; that's the most current
scenario
that comes to us today and it would be very feasible to approve it." Ballesteros notes that the only previous time
winter baseball on the west coast started in November was in 1958-59,
when the
former Liga Sonora began their 36-game regular season on November 14.
In his Zona Contacto column, Ballesteros
advises LMB owners to not
"fall into despair" and make "irreparable mistakes," like
the appointment of the "worst president in the history of the Liga,"
Javier Salinas. He said one potential format being discussed would
involve
three groups of five or six teams each playing regular season games
behind
closed doors in Mexico City, Monterrey and Merida, a scenario
Ballesteros says
would result in "absolutely pure losses" for the league, which does
not have the television revenue that would allow leagues in Taiwan and
South
Korea to use a similar setup.
In an interview with Septima Entrada, LMB
president Horacio
de la Vega told writer Irving Furlong, "For the moment, we are not
contemplating being able to do the season behind closed doors. We
depend on the
attendance of people and need the potential of making internal sales at
our
stadiums. In other words, it's a requirement for us." De la Vega did
allow
that everything depends on health contingencies in Mexico due to the
Wuhan
virus: "We'll have to explore it. It can be a temporary solution, too,
that we start like this and then migrate to another situation. At the
moment
it's not one of the situations we're considering but, well, we're going
to see
how things develop."
Ballesteros added that the LMB is seeking
to sanction anyone who leaks information to the media, which he said
was
nothing new: "They have tried this for years and the more they pressure
their associates, the faster it flows and from new fronts."
According the the Puro Beisbol editor, several
LMB club
owners wanted their season to open on the planned April 6 date a
month-and-a-half ago, although Northern Division teams were opposed,
while Mex
Pac owners and president Omar Canizales watched “comfortably” from the
sidelines. Now, however, the LMP calendar is in danger for two reasons:
There
is no exact date for controlling the Wuhan virus and the Mexican League
is now
sending signals that their season may extend as far as November. The
closest
the two leagues came to colliding schedules was in 2018, when that
Fall's Serie del Rey ended on October 9, three
days before the Mex Pac regular season opened. This year, the LMP
season could
potentially begin one day after a Game Seven in the LMB's championship
series.
As a result, the Mex Pac may
have to expand the limit of foreigners to eight per club while opening
up the
often-contentious issue of defining players with dual nationality to
ensure
each of their ten teams have enough players to start the season with.
EL
TITAN NOT RULING
OUT
PLAYING IN MEXICAN LEAGUE THIS YEAR
El Fildeo reports that former major league
All-Star first baseman
Adrian Gonzalez is reportedly willing to consider playing in the
Mexican League
this year once the season gets underway.
In an interview with Marca Clara reporter
Guillermo Garcia,
Gonzalez said he was "looking at the possibility of going to play in
the
Mexican League this year to see how I felt in order to possibly play in
the
first Olympic Games for Mexico." The Mexican National team qualified
for the
country's first appearance in baseball competition at the Olympics last
winter
in the WBSC Premier12 tournament. However, the Summer Games in Tokyo
were
postponed until next year due to ongoing concerns over the Wuhan virus.
El Titan has not played
professionally since June 10, 2018 as a member of the New York Mets,
going
hitless in a 2-0 win against the crosstown rival Yankees before being
released
the following day. By then, he had collected 2,050 hits, 317 homers and
1,202
RBIs to augment a .287 batting average over a 15-year ML career that
began with
the Texas Rangers in 2004. Gonzalez appeared in five All-Star Games,
took part
in four postseasons, won four Gold Gloves for fielding at the initial
hassock
and was given two Silver Slugger awards as the best-hitting first
baseman in
MLB. He finished in the Top 20 among MVP vote-getters eight times,
coming in
fourth in 2010 (when he hit .298 with 31 homers and 101 RBIs for San
Diego that
season).
Although he was born in San
Diego and attended high school in nearby Chula Vista, the 37-year-old
Gonzalez
spent many years being raised across the border in Tijuana by parents
David and
Alba and is qualified by his heritage (David grew up playing baseball
in
Obregon, Sonora) to play for Mexican national teams. Brother Edgar, who
grew up
with him in Tijuana, played second base in MLB with the San Diego
Padres and in
NPB with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants and managed in the Mexican Pacific
League
before being named by Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to
head
Probeis, an AMLO-created federal agency charged with revitalizing
baseball
across the country from the grass-roots level up. Adrian now lives in
La Jolla,
another San Diego suburb, with wife Betsy and two daughters.
Gonzalez has represented
Mexico in World Baseball Classics in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017.
Although it's
been nearly two years since his last competitive game, he told Marca Clara that he's always hoped to
return to the diamond someday and wanted to play Olympic baseball for
Mexico.
"It's something that I've had in mind," he said, "and it's one
of the reasons why I haven't retired." Gonzalez acknowledges that he'll
have to earn his place on the roster next summer in Tokyo. "It's not
something where I say, 'They have to put me on the team.' Not at all. I
have to
go to the Mexican League to show that I deserve to be on that team. And
if I
don't deserve it, I don't want to be on that team."
If Gonzalez does indeed play
in the Mexican League this summer, it would mark the first time he's
appeared
in the LMB but he is no stranger to playing baseball south of the
border. He
and brother Edgar played side-by-side for several winters with the
Mazatlan
Venados of the Mexican Pacific League.
TESTS:
MEXICAN OLYMPIC BASEBALL CANDIDATES
OUT OF SHAPE
The Monclova Acereros'
offseason signing of Bartolo Colon points to something I'd read in a
book years
ago that drew my attention and sympathies to Mexican baseball: As long
as you
can get the job done there, it doesn't matter how old you are or what
shape
you're in. Colon stands as both Exhibits A and B for that axiom. While
his age
and body-type were what exemplified him to many fans during the latter
part of
his Major League Baseball pitching career, he will not stand out in
either
regard in the Mexican League.
However, while age is indeed
becoming a relative thing ("40 is the new 30" and all that), a recent
essay by Proceso writer Beatriz Pereyra shares the concerns of
a
highly-respected advisor to Probeis director Edgar Gonzalez about both
the lack
of muscle mass and the high percentage of fat among 35 baseball players
listed
on the Mexican National Team's
pre-selection roster for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, postponed
until
2021 due to Wuhan virus concerns in Japan.
"I did not expect good
results," says advisor Miguel Valdes, a longtime top figure in Cuban
baseball, "but I did not expect them to be so bad."
Of the 80 players currently on the
Olympic pre-selection roster, 17 Mexican nationals and 18
Mexican-Americans
showed up for physical testing in 23 different categories held in late
February
at the National Center for Talent Development and High Performance.
Areas
covered included physical, anthropometric, body composition and
psychological
variables, with Pereyra depicting the overall results as "deplorable"
and "devastating."
According to the report obtained by Proceso, 20
of the 35 players showed a
high percentage of fat and poor muscle development, thus creating a
negative
imbalance between fat and muscle ("characteristic of sedentary people,
or
endomorphs"). Twenty-one players had body fat that far exceeds what's
considered optimal in baseball while 22 exhibited poor muscle
development.
Player diets were considered "inadequate" in all 35 players tested.
The report suggests that pitchers
should have 14 percent body fat, corner players (catchers, first and
third
basemen, left and rightfielders) should be between 11 and 12 percent
and middle
fielders (shortstops, second basemen and centerfielders) will optimally
show up
to 10 percent body fat.
"It doesn't surprise me so much
that it shows there are overweight pre-selected players," Valdes told
Pereyra. "I AM troubled by the fact that in baseball, the percentages
of
fat are high compared to other sports and that in Mexicans, the average
is
above 20 percent. There are some who exceed 30 percent, which is
equivalent to
having about 15 kilos (33 pounds) of pure fat.” He then asked
rhetorically,
“How can they play with all that weight? There is no efficiency for
high
performance. High-performance teams compete with between 11 and 14
percent of
collective fat."
Valdes spent 35 years managing the
Cuban National Team before defecting in 2002 along with his 14-year-old
son and
star pitcher Jose Contreras, who went on to appear in a World Series
and
All-Star Game as a member of the Chicago White Sox. He signed on last
September
with Probeis (aka Office of the Presidency for the Promotion and
Development of
Baseball), a creation of Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
headed
by former MLB and NPB infielder Gonzalez.
“I won 151 games in a row with the
Cuban team," Valdes notes. "Olympic Games, Pan American Games,
Central American Games, World Cups...everything that is possible to
win. I give
credit in a large percentage to what we achieved with functional
capacity. They
are the sciences applied to sport, in addition to the team's talent."
According to Valdes, if Mexico wins
an Olympic medal, it will not be by luck or chance: "We can compete at
the
highest level if we do things right. We have to get to the Olympics
better
prepared than the other teams, with superior parameters, and that is
not easy.
"But a medal can be built. Yes, it can be built!"
