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Monday,
March 26, 2 0 1 8
March 19, 2018 - March 12, 2018 - March 5, 2018 - February 26, 2018
February 19,
2018, Rookiegate!
- February 5,
2018
- January 29,
2018 - Culiacan
wins LMP pennant
Lowey,
Acereros top TJ, 6-1, in Mexican League 2018 opener
The Mexican
League's Pitcher of the Year for 2016, Josh
Lowey, tossed five innings of two-hit shutout ball and former American
League
Championship Series MVP Delmon Young slugged a solo homer to lead the
Monclova
Acereros to a 6-1 win over defending champions Tijuana last Thursday
night in
the LMB's Spring 2018 season opener at a sold-out Estadio B'Air in the
border
city.
Lowey looked
like the Lowey of two years ago as the Liga
strikeout king for the past two summers whiffed four Toros batters and
walked two. It wasn't entirely a sleigh
ride for the
Floridian righty, though, as he loaded the bases in the bottom of the
first by
walking Isaac Rodriguez and Dustin Martin after Tijuana leadoff hitter
Justin
Greene reached first on a throwing error by Monclova third baseman Rudy
Amador,
but Lowey settled down to retire dangerous batters Cyle Hankerd, Corey
Brown
and Jorge Cantu on ten pitches to escape the inning unscathed en route
to
setting down ten straight Toros batsmen.
Young, who
swatted 18 homers for Detroit in 2012 and paced
the Tigers' four-game sweep of the Yankees with two homers, a double
and six
RBIs, took Tijuana's ageless reliever Rafael Diaz deep in the third
with a
line-drive bomb over the wall in left-center to bring give the Acereros
a 4-0 lead
after Monclova had scored three times in the second, starting with an
Alberto
Carreon double that plated Matt Clark with the game's first run. The Steelers' lead had risen to 6-0 before
Greene scored TJ's lone run from third on a Martin ground-out against
reliever
Zach Phillips.
A total of
17,698 fans packed the stands for the contest in
Tijuana, held one night before the rest of the LMB teams opened their
seasons
on Friday. In all there were three
sellout crowds among the eight Liga openers.
Besides the full house in Tijuana, a total of 21,746 aficionados
were on
hand at Estadio Monterrey for the Sultanes' 5-1 win over rival Saltillo
as
Agustin Murillo reached base four times (two singles, two walks),
scored once
and drove in a run while 5,600 onlookers filled tiny Estadio Fray Nano
in
Mexico City for the Diablos Rojos' 8-5 loss to Puebla in which the
Pericos
broke open a scoreless tie with a seven-run fifth inning keyed by
Michael
Crouse's two-run double. Surprisingly,
the usually-moribund Tabasco Olmecas lured 8,132 fans to Parque
Centenario 27
de Febrero for a 4-2 defeat to Yucatan, thanks to Jose Aguilar's
tiebreaking
two-run single in the top of the ninth.
At the other end of the spectrum, just 4,138 were on hand in
Leon to see
the Bravos hold off Oaxaca, 7-6, as veteran third sacker Miguel Torrero
singled, tripled, scored two runs and drove in three for the home team.
MexPac to
move league office from Hermosillo to Guadalajara
After nearly
five decades with headquarters in Hermosillo,
the Mexican Pacific League has announced it will be moving its offices
east to
Guadalajara during the offseason. The LMP has been based in the Sonora
city
since 1970-71, when the circuit changed its name from Sonora-Sinaloa
League to
its current title and became part of the revived Caribbean Series
lineup (along
with Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic) after the CS
had been
discontinued in 1961 following Cuba's exit in the wake of a communist
takeover
of the island nation, where purported baseball fan Fidel Castro
abolished the
professional game and replaced it with the nominally-amateur Cuban
National
Series.
In announcing
the shift from Hermosillo, MexPac president
Omar Canizales said "the Assembly of Presidents, where the eight teams
were represented, agreed to a very important decision in making a move
from the
current headquarters of the Liga del Pacifico de Beisbol to the city of
Guadalajara." Canizales explained
that the objective in the move is "having greater closeness to
different
actors in the media and different business partners, as well as a
greater
presence in the center of the country."
Home of the Jalisco Charros, Guadalajara is Mexico's
second-largest
metropolitan area with more than five million residents (Hermosillo's
metro
population is about 900,000) and is easily the easternmost franchise
site in
the LMP.
Much speculation
has arisen among Mexican baseball columnists
about the move, much of it on whether Canizales & Company are
gearing up
for expansion away from the Pacific coast and into the country's larger
population centers. The shift of the
Guasave Algodoneros to Guadalajara in 2014 marked the first venture
outside
states bordering the Gulf of California and Canizales has previously
said he'd
be interested in placing MexPac franchises in Mexico City and Monterrey. Some talk is that the shift may be tied to a
proposed Mexican National League in which stronger franchises from both
the LMP
and Mexican League would combine into one larger circuit playing
year-round
using Liga MX soccer's two-season approach as a template in much the
same way
the Liga is going this year with their Spring and Fall seasons and
playoffs. At this juncture, however,
speculation is just that.
There appears
little doubt that the move to Guadalajara is in
part a reaction to the very proactive moves that first-year LMB
president
Javier Salinas has been making to raise the profile of his circuit as
the LMP
completed a schedule amid concerns of stagnating and declining
attendance in
many of its cities, with one Puro Beisbol
writer stating that he believed the announced attendance at a number of
ballparks was fudged after watching games on TV showing the stands far
less
occupied than the boxscores were stating.
Although it is the younger of the two leagues based in smaller
cities
than the Liga, the MexPac has shown itself to be the better-attended
and more
stable league of the two over the past several years.
The LMB still has plenty of problem
franchises (Puro Beisbol editor
Francisco Ballesteros says that only five or six of the Liga's 16 teams
are on
solid financial ground, with a like number subsidized almost entirely
by local
and/or state governments) with many unresolved internal issues such as
Rookiegate, but Salinas' bold offseason moves may be forcing Mexico's
Junior
Circuit to step up its own game.
The next LMP
Assembly of Presidents meeting is slated for
April 19 in Mazatlan, where league officials will tour Estadio Teodoro
Mariscal
to view upgrades being made to that ballpark.
Ex-MLB
player, coach Castro claims mistreatment during short Toros stint
Former Major
League Baseball infielder Juan Gabriel Castro,
who served as a coach for the National League champion Los Angeles
Dodgers last
season, is now looking for work after a short, strange term of
employment with
the Mexican League's Tijuana Toros came to an end after just two months. And the 45-year-old Los Mochis native is not
happy about his first foray in LMB baseball.
Castro spent all
or part of 17 seasons in the big leagues
between 1995 and 2011, primarily with the Dodgers and Cincinnati. While never an established starter, Castro
made himself useful with his versatility as a shortstop who could fill
in
capably at second or third base. He hit
.229 with 36 homers for his career, batting .253 with career highs of
nine
homers and 33 RBIs over 113 games for the Reds in 2003 for his best
offensive
season. Following his retirement as a
player in 2011, Castro was named as a special assistant to the General
Manager
with the Dodgers and also coached the Mexican National Team in the 2013
World
Baseball Classic under current White Sox skipper Rick Renteria. He's spent the last two summers as the
Dodgers' Quality Assurance Coach for helmsman Dave Roberts.
That pedigree
was enough to draw the interest of Toros owner
Alberto Uribe, who first expressed interest in Castro joining the
borderite
squad after the latter sent a congratulatory note to Uribe following
Tijuana's
win over Puebla in the LMB Championship Series last year.
According to Castro, the two went on to
discuss Castro making a powerpoint presentation using sabermetrics to
the
Toros' front office staff during the offseason, a conversation that led
to
Uribe offering Castro the job of Sports Director (with duties similar
to a
General Manager north of the border), a position that had been left
vacant
after former MLB pitcher Jorge Campillo was moved into a Vice President
position at the end of September. After
Castro accepted, he says, that's when things went south.
In a letter
posted by Mexico City's Excelsior, Castro says that he
took the job in December, letting
the Dodgers brass know he was moving on and reported for work in
January. After a month on the job,
however, Castro
says Uribe told him that "I have decided to take up the sports
administration of the organization and will support you until you can
resume
your successful life and career plan."
In other words, you're fired.
Castro says that Uribe urged him to stay in contact with the
Toros
secretary to coordinate payments from the team until he found a new job.
Confused by the
situation after receiving a text from the
team eight days later that they were waiting for him to "report to
work," Castro drove to the Toros training camp in Tucson for a meeting
with Uribe, who he says never showed up but had arranged for the ex-big
leaguer
to serve as a coach under Tijuana manager Pedro Mere.
While noting in text exchanges with the front
office that he had been hired as a GM and not a coach, Castro says he
spent
last month helping the team prepare for the season but received no pay
for his
time in camp before leaving for his home in Phoenix.
The experience
has left Castro wondering why he was let go,
let alone what he's going to do now, thanks to Uribe:
"It is very sad that the lack of ethics
and professionalism has left me without a job with the Dodgers because
of all
the promises that Mr. Uribe made to convince me to work for the Tijuana
Toros
team as sports director," Castro's letter states. "In
the end, because a person changed
his mind, it's left me without the opportunity to continue as a coach
in the
best baseball in the world with the Dodgers."