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B a s e b a l l
M e x i c o
Monday,
May 25, 2020
LIGA MAY OPEN IN AUGUST, MEX PAC SETS OPENER
The
Mexican League is reportedly considering starting its season in August,
with
teams playing 51-game schedules (or half the original 102-game total
heading
into April's canceled openers. However, nothing has been etched in
stone as the
Wuhan virus panic continues while three LMB teams were even facing the
choice
of either playing their seasons on the road or canceling altogether,
including
the defending Liga champion Monclova Acereros.
The
LMB Assembly of Presidents held a videoconference early last week to go
over
their latest options. Saltillo Saraperos president Cesar Cantu told the
El Zocalo newspaper that the 16 team
owners and league president Horacio de la Vega conferred with Mexican
health
authorities, who offered advice regarding parameters for when and how
the
circuit would operate in 2020. According to Cantu, each state with an
LMB
franchise may make a decision on what kind of events with large
gatherings would
be allowed (more on that in a paragraph).
Cantu
said the Liga is now eyeing an August start, four months after the
loop's
five-month regular had been slated to begin. Baseball writers south of
the
border have speculated that the LMB would play a 51-game season, but it
would
be hard to do that and play a full eight-team, three-stage postseason
without
stretching well into the winter Mexican Pacific League season, which is
tentatively set to open on October 12.
For
a short time, there was a question of how many LMB teams might take the
field.
Coahuila governor Miguel Angel Riquelme last week announced that there
would be
no more "massive" events in his state through at least September 15
and possibly the end of a year as a preventive response to the Wuhan
virus.
"We are going to spend many months taking care of sanitary measures,"
Riquelme was quoted as saying in Puro
Beisbol.
Such
a measure would affect the champion Acereros, Saltillo Saraperos and
Union
Laguna Algodoneros. Although there may be options of playing home games
in
empty ballparks or all games away from their respective homes, Mexican
League
teams rely on ticket, concessions and ballpark advertising revenue to
survive
financially and the potential of the three teams simply closing down
until 2021
to minimize losses was not off the table. Riquelme backtracked on his
statement
one day later.
The
LMB office had not issued a public comment to that point, perhaps
because
president de la Vega was trying to dislodge his heart from his throat,
but the
threat served to heighten the vulnerability of many cash-strapped Liga
franchises who lack funds to field a team without recouping the
expenses with
ballpark income. The bottom line is that the longer it takes for the
Mexican
League to put its product on the field, the harder it's going to be for
the
95-year-old loop to schedule any kind of season in 2020, however
abbreviated.
As we'll see later, one prominent baseball columnist is calling for the
Liga to
not play until next year. He won't be the last.
Meanwhile
out west, Mexican Pacific League owners held a videoconference of their
own and
have confirmed that all ten teams are expected to participate in the
upcoming
2020-21 season, which is expected to start on October 12 regardless of
what
happens with the Mexican League. Although a manpower shortage at the
outset of
the first half may happen if the two schedules overlap, LMP owners are
said to
be confident they'll be able to fill their rosters and operate in a
state of
flux as players complete their LMB obligations.
There
has been some debate over the use of imports in both leagues,
particularly in
the Mexican League, where budget shortfalls make bringing in
more-expensive
players from the United States a fiscal risk to many teams. Such
concerns are
not as acute in the Mex Pac, where nearly 10,000 people attended each
game last
winter (a higher average than any minor league in the hemisphere), but
some
players who've crossed the border to play winterball in the past may be
hesitant to do so if high Wuhan virus concerns in Mexico continue.
LIGA NORTE
CONSIDERS WINTER MOVE; NEW BAJA LOOP COMING?
With
their 2020 regular season and playoffs all but scuttled by the Wuhan
virus, the
Northern Mexico League is now contemplating a move to a winter
schedule.
However, a group of investors in Baja California Sur is also looking at
starting their own league at the same time of year.
During
a recent interview posted on the La Paz Delfines Facebook page, LNM
president
Jorge Rivera said he has not ruled out converting the Liga Norte into a
winterball circuit. While stating that his own preference would be to
remain a
summer league, he noted that economic conditions created by the
pandemic might
make a move to later in the year more prudent, if not outright
necessary.
Although Rivera said he would prefer to return to the LNM's traditional
April-July schedule in 2021, the changing landscape of baseball in the
northwest corner of the country might make a permanent move to a winter
schedule more attractive to him and Liga Norte owners.
The
LNM, which is considered Class AA within the Mexican baseball system,
was dealt
a severe blow following their 2018 season when the Mexican League
withdrew its
official support, along with the player affiliations and 40,000 pesos
per team
subsidies that came with it. While Liga Norte teams were able to cobble
together affiliations with LMB teams last summer, the loss of both
their
official designation as an LMB "developmental" league and extra cash
flow hurt. The LNM fought their way through the 2019 campaign with five
teams
and had announced expansion to Otay (a suburb of Tijuana), where the
Industralies were expected to play in 2020.
Then,
after the first of the year, the Liga Norte was dealt a couple of body
blows
that will be difficult to recover from. The first was the Wuhan virus
itself,
of course, which has caused baseball across Mexico to shut down and
created
uncertainty as to when it will be allowed to resume. The second blow,
the
resurrection of the Sonora Professional Baseball League (or Liga
Sonora), may
have more longterm implications for the LNM, which itself broke away
from the
original Northern Sonora League in 2012. The LNS survived two summers
before
shutting down in 2014 while the LNM carried on, but the revived Liga
Sonora
appears to be coming back with a vengeance. Leaders were in talks with
LMB
president Horacio de la Vega earlier this year about affiliation
agreements and
two of their proposed eight franchises appear to be current LNM teams,
the 2019
Liga Norte champion San Luis Algodoneros and Caborca Reds.
If
the Mexican League does indeed make the Liga Sonora their Class AA farm
league
in 2021, the Liga Norte's best chance for long-term survival may be to
make a
permanent move to winterball and serve a similar role as a feeder
circuit for
the Mexican Pacific League. The Mex Pac used to be able to call up
players from
both the Liga Noroeste (in the state of Nayarit) and the Veracruz
Winter
League, but the LNB shut down as a professional circuit in 2015 and the
LIV
went dark last winter with prospects no brighter for 2020-21, as
sisters Regina
and Fabiola Vazquez (who underwrote the LIV in 2018-19) now appear to
be
pursuing the return of the Mexican League to Veracruz instead. LMP
sports
managers had difficulties finding in-shape players last winter to fill
roster
spots when their own players were injured, released or left the team,
so
there's reason to believe an agreement could be worked out between the
Mex Pac
and LNM.
The
Liga Norte may face a potential challenger in winter baseball. Editor
Fernando
Ballesteros of Puro Beisbol reports
that businessmen representing the proposed Southern California League
(or Liga
Sudcaliforniana) approached the Mexican Pacific League earlier this
year
inquiring about an affiliation agreement of their own. The director of
municipal sports in La Paz, Guillermo Ortalejo, reportedly already has
that
city's Estadio Arturo C. Nahl (home of the LNM Delfines) in mind for
games this
winter, but Ballesteros writes that while the LMP certainly could use a
new
in-season source of replacement players, leaders there were not
prioritizing
the new league. One potential outcome is a merger of sorts between the
Liga
Norte and the upstarts, who may need each other more than either might
be willing
to admit.
BENCOMO:
"MEXICAN LEAGUE CONDEMNED TO STOP IN 2020"
One of Mexico's most-respected
baseball writers, Hitazo.com
editor Hector Bencomo,
wrote a May 18 column urging the Mexican League to shut down for the
current
year in order to avoid steep financial losses while regrouping to come
back
stronger in 2021. Here is a Google Translate version of that column,
with
minimal translation from Googlese for grammatical clarity:
Every year, most teams in the
Mexican Baseball League announce that they lost money by operating
their ball
clubs.
Perhaps the Sultanes, Tijuana and
maybe Diablos could boast of having "won" a little in the last two
seasons, but they are profits that are reinvested to continue giving
baseball
to their loyal fans.
Mexican teams depend on three main
factors to stay afloat: advertising, box office and concessions (sale
of beer,
food, souvenirs).
On some occasions they have depended
on the great fortunes of their owners, for whom spending on their team
was like
taking a cat's hair. But those times seem to be over.
With the Covid 19 pandemic, the
national (and world) economy has plummeted and many companies have
closed, many
people have lost their jobs, and business sales have fallen, so
advertising has
started to drop out of the screens, radio, newspapers, etc.
Without advertising and with the
only option to start a mini season with empty stadiums, what is the
point of
playing the 2020 season of the LMB?
For the record, I am not being
insensitive, but realistic.
I am sure that all the LMB exon May
18ecutives want to carry out the campaign and I applaud them. But given
the
country's conditions, which businessman wants to go and throw millions
of pesos
in the trash right now?
Closing the offices and thinking of
returning stronger in 2021 would be the healthiest thing for Mexican
summer
baseball. It is true, the big losers are baseball players, stadium
workers,
chroniclers and all the businesses that depend on baseball activity,
such as
vendors of bats, balls, uniforms, etc.
Journalist David Medrano published
last May 8 in the newspaper Récord
that Mexican soccer would lose 2.5 billion pesos (US$108.7 million) if
its 2020
season does not end. But it will lose 800 million (US$34.8 million)
when
playing without people in the seats. Can you imagine how much money a
packed
house generates at Estadio Universitario to watch the Liga MX Tigres
play?
Soccer is a much better business
than baseball in Mexico, so that's why it's in their best interest to
lose
money now to try to get it back in the next tournaments.
In Mexican baseball the figures are
not so abundant but in the same way, it will hurt the owners to lose up
to 20
million pesos (US$869,000) in an adventure that they do not even know
how it
will end because if a new outbreak comes or the players catch it,
things are
going to get worse when they are all back on the field and have to stop
again.
And not to think that the government
will provide money to save the season...it would be foolish now that
attention
should focus on the health sector, where there are still deficiencies.
And that is the panorama that we see
from here to August or September. In Nuevo León, they expect the peak
of
infected for mid-June. Massive events in many states will be banned for
months,
leaving little room for the LMB to even aspire to start its season.
If you rush me a little, the Mexican
Pacific League will have to take out the calculator because perhaps in
October
there will also be no permits for the public to attend massive events.
They will also be subject to the
parity of the dollar against the peso, which would make them think of a
season
with fewer foreigners or to outright play with pure Mexican talent,
something
that would put Guasave and Monterrey on the ropes, teams that just
arrived in
the league who have not solidified their national base.
This being the case, the LMB may do
better to follow the wise advice to "stay home" and return to 2021
with more force than ever. Remember that I am telling you this first of
all,
much to my regret.
What do you think?
#hitazo #hectorbencomo