As MLB veterans head south for money and opportunity, the Mexican League has its moment (2024)

MEXICO CITY — Ryan Meisinger decided to go to Mexico on July 1. He packed his belongings, boarded a commercial flight, and flew to Mexico City. When he landed, he was officially an employee of the Diablos Rojos del Mexico, a club in the Liga Beisbol Mexicana.

Meisinger, 30, had begun the summer in North Carolina as a relief pitcher for the High Point Rockers, an independent team in the Atlantic League. It was not exactly Plan A. He had once been a fringe major-league pitcher who made appearances for the Orioles, Cardinals and Cubs, but after toiling in the Reds organization last year, he found himself outside of affiliate baseball and in a predicament.

“I was pretty much losing money playing in indy ball,” he said.

The maximum salary in the Atlantic League is $3,000 a month before taxes, so that part was expected. But Meisinger had hoped to pitch well enough to draw interest from a major-league team that might need depth at Triple A. When that didn’t happen by July 1, he found a financial lifeline south of the border, signing a free-agent deal to pitch for the best team in Mexico, where the season begins in April and the Serie del Rey — the equivalent of the World Series — starts in early September.

For a pitcher like Meisinger, a deal with the Diablos Rojos comes with a monthly salary that ranges from $15,000 to $25,000, better facilities than most minor-league teams, and a chance to compete for a championship in an unfamiliar baseball culture. In 2024, a record number of former big-league players have chosen this path.

Once a last resort for big-league journeymen and players with troubled pasts, the Mexican League has propped open its doors to foreign players, becoming a destination for a cohort of veteran major leaguers pushed out of baseball because of the elimination of American minor-league clubs, shifting labor trends and new roster caps in the minors. Some, like Robinson Cano, Didi Gregorius and Jonathan Schoop, are former standouts whose best days are behind them. But dozens of others represent an eclectic influx of former big leaguers who have remade a proud domestic league, elevating its level of play while reducing opportunities for homegrown Mexican players.

“There’s way more opportunity for, lets say, an American player or a Dominican player,” said Benji Gil, a former Angels infielder and the manager of the Mexican national team. “If they’re not (playing) in the states or they’re not getting the money they feel they deserve, they’re able to come to Mexico now and get paid way more money.”

The changes have been brewing for more than a decade, as increased investment from owners and renewed focus on baseball from the Mexican government have led to better facilities, higher salaries and professional travel, and more cultural attention, embodied by the country’s third-place finish in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. But the floodgates opened this year, when the league office increased the number of foreign players allowed on each team’s 30-player roster from seven to 20.

For proof, one only needs to glance at rosters across the league. There is Jonathan Villar and Daniel Palka, playing with Gregorius and Schoop for Union Laguna in Torreon; there is Luke Voit and Adeiny Hechavarria, playing for Tabasco; there is Yasiel Puig and Matt Adams and Julio Teheran and Alcides Escobar and Danny Salazar and Aristides Aquino and Mallex Smith, and, well, you get the idea.

“It’s hard to get picked up in affiliate ball because of all the jobs they cut these past couple years,” Meisinger says. “If you look at our team, we have so many big leaguers on this team.”

The Mexican League remains far behind the domestic leagues in Japan and South Korea, which offer higher competition and substantially better pay. Yet it has made strides to catch up with the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan, and as major-league teams continue to value young players and the minor leagues wrestle with the possibility of further consolidation, the Mexican League could emerge as something else altogether — an unofficial minor league, an international pathway to Asia, a geographically convenient place where careers survive.

“We make the joke that we’re scratch lottery tickets,” said Kevin McCarthy, a former Royals pitcher who has spent the past two seasons with the Tecolotes de Nuevo Laredo. “We know we can all still play, and we still love playing, but we’re also very aware of the fact of where baseball is at analytically — the numbers — the rosters are cut down and every year is a decision.”

On a Saturday in late July, as dusk turned to night, a crowd of Mexican baseball fans filled Tijuana’s Estadio Chevron, turning the ballpark into a wall of noise. Fans spun noise-makers. Music blared between each pitch — all the way up until the ball was released. And an army of vendors, at least three per section, all wearing bright neon vests, sold churros, beer, candy and everything else.

It was the final weekend series of the regular season, and Tijuana was hosting Saltillo in one of the liveliest atmospheres in the league, a 17,000-seat ballpark just 24 miles from the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park. The proximity to the United States allows American-born players on the Tijuana roster to live across the border and take a shuttle bus across the border. It also highlights the contrast between two baseball cultures.

“It’s different from the states,” said Williamson, the Tijuana GM. “It’s not better. It’s just different. It’s just a different way to feel in a stadium.”

The Mexican League, shortened to LMB, was founded in 1925, and when Lorenzo Bundy, the manager of the Diablos Rojos, came to the country in the mid-1980s, the league still possessed some of its rowdy, chaotic charm. Players told stories of encountering armed police with M-16s in the dugout. Fans tossed live snakes onto the field. Once, according to a story pitcher George Brunet told Sports Illustrated, a manager’s argument with an umpire turned into an all-out donnybrook involving players and fans and photographers and reporters, too.

“Before? There was a lot going on,” Bundy said, and he didn’t just mean the persistent steroid rumors that often followed the league.

But as the league professionalized across the past decade, clubs like the Toros de Tijuana were at the forefront, borrowing promotional ideas from minor-league teams and creating a template for other clubs to follow. In addition to nightly concerts and postgame parties, the ballpark features a small group of fans who refer to themselves as “Los Escandalosa” (The Scandalous) and spend the game screaming. The experience feels like Triple A, with a Mexican vibe.

“From the late ’70s to the 2000s, there were the same type of owners,” said Miguel Boada, a public relations director for the Diablos Rojos who has also worked as a baseball journalist. “They had their idea about baseball, and they didn’t want to make a huge impact (on) baseball in Mexico. They just wanted to have all the benefits for them. The league worked like this for 30 years.”

The recent investments include the five-year-old Alfredo Harp Helu Stadium in Mexico City, named for the club’s billionaire owner and which hosted a Giants-Padres regular-season series in 2023, and a new round of expansion this year, which resulted in new clubs in Chihuahua and Querétaro. The ballpark amenities and travel have improved, and so have the salaries. The monthly salary cap for Mexican League teams, according to team executives not authorized to publicly discuss salaries, is $9 million pesos — or around $475,000 for the entire 30-man roster. According to Ricardo Williamson, the general manager of Tijuana, it’s a significant shift from more than a decade ago, when the league capped individual salaries at “eight to nine thousand” dollars.

Gil, the manager of the Mexican national team, has reservations about the declining opportunities for Mexican players. But he believes the addition of former major-league stars like Cano — who hit a team-record .431 for the Diablos Rojos this season — could serve as a recruiting pitch to other big-league stars.

“It’s a huge selling point,” he said. “And not only that, but they also have friends that are in the big leagues. And they’re like, ‘Hey you know what, you’re not getting enough of an opportunity in Triple A, even though you’re making good money. Well, over here you’re going to make just as good of money, but you’re gonna get to play every day. You’re playing to win, you’re not sitting behind a prospect.’”

Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu, the home of the Diablos Rojos, sits between turns of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez — Mexico City’s sprawling Formula One track — which itself is tucked in the Magdalena Mixhuca Sports City, once home to the 1968 Olympics. The ballpark, which opened in 2019, cost $166 million and is the class of the league, home to a modern weight room, batting cages, a private chef, and a large red neon sign in the dugout tunnel.

When translated from Spanish to English, it reads: “When I take the field, what I want most is to get the fans out of their seats with one of my plays.”

Jimmy Yacabonis, a 32-year-old pitcher from New Jersey, stood near the sign one day in late July. Before Yacabonis signed earlier this year, he knew nothing about the Diablos Rojos. He didn’t know it had won 16 championships, the most in league history, or that its home park was a palatial — if somewhat cozy — 20,000-seat stadium with a major-league quality clubhouse.

“I didn’t even really know about this league,” he said.

Yacabonis’s journey to Mexico is a common one. Once a 13th-round pick, he debuted with the Orioles in 2017 and became a part-time reliever for five teams across seven years, the last stint coming with the Mets in 2023. His stock fading, he headed to winter ball in the Dominican Republic. But the lack of Triple-A offers led to what he termed a “falling out” with his previous agent, and he found himself at home in Miami as spring training began. It was during his time in the Dominican, Yacabonis says, that someone recommended the Mexican League.

“They were like: ‘It’s just a good avenue to have,’” Yacabonis said. “If I ever go back to the States or Japan or something, this is always in my back pocket type of thing.”

In a previous era, players with Yacabonis’ resume might have been able to latch on somewhere at Triple A, but the recent roster crunch in the minors has changed the equation. MLB took over the minor leagues following the 2020 season, which led to the elimination of 40 minor-league teams. The league then negotiated the first-ever minor-league players’ Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2023, agreeing to higher salaries for minor leaguers. But the new minor-league CBA gave MLB the option of capping rosters at 165, which led to the elimination of 450 jobs in total.

“There are definitely fewer spots for some of the veteran guys that teams would usually hang onto for depth,” said catcher Patrick Mazeika, who joined the Diablos earlier this summer. “But it benefited a lot of the younger guys, so that’s fine. Instead of making a few hundred dollars every paycheck, they’re actually living comfortably.”

Mazeika, 30, was an eighth-round pick of the Mets in 2015. He ascended through the system and had cups of coffee in the majors in 2021 and 2022. But he struggled at the plate for the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in 2023, which made another Triple-A offer unlikely.

When he joined the Diablos, he walked into a clubhouse with a group of former big-league pitchers that included Daniel Ponce de Leon, Álex Claudio and Trevor Bauer, who played in Japan last season after serving a 194-game suspension for violating MLB’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse policy.

Claudio, a 32-year-old who grew up in Puerto Rico, said he decided to come after multiple friends from the major leagues told him the league was improving.

“I was worried about the food, how the people were (and) what the place was like,” he said in Spanish. “All those things. Because in reality I didn’t have any clue what things were like in Mexico.”

For pitchers like Yacabonis, Claudio or Meisinger, there are limited options if they wish to push off retirement. The most coveted spots reside in Japan and Korea, where salaries begin in the low six figures. But players on the fringe quickly learn the realities of international baseball. Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan has a limit of four international players on the active roster, while the Korean Baseball Organization allows just three. Mazeika, meanwhile, would have little chance to play in either country, because both leagues avoid foreign catchers, while Meisinger notes that the KBO is notoriously cool on foreign relief pitchers. All that, Yacabonis says, doesn’t even factor in the loneliness often felt by American players in Japan.

Another alternative is independent ball, but the salaries pale in comparison to Mexico, where imports generally start at $12,000 per month and the best teams pay players up to $30,000 per month — a sum that can be more than Triple A.

“Personally, I would rather be in Mexico than AAA,” said Nuevo Laredo’s McCarthy, who last appeared for the Royals in 2020 before spending two seasons at Triple A for the Red Sox and Cubs. “I know you’re a step away in Triple A, but I’ve done the Triple-A (thing). Especially pitching-wise, sitting in a bullpen with 15 other guys in Triple A doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as knowing you’re on a team playing for a championship, getting playing time, and still getting decent money.”

If the flood of former major leaguers has changed the face of the Mexican League, Tijuana’s Isaac Rodriguez is a reminder of what it used to look like.

Rodriguez, 33, was born in Hermosillo, Mexico, but attended high school in Florida and played baseball at Southern Miss. When he finished school, he had little interest from MLB clubs. But a connection led to an opportunity in Tijuana. Ten years later, he is the Toros’ team captain and an increasingly rare figure: a Mexican player in the Mexican League who has never played in affiliate ball.

“We’re getting better athletes,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just the game’s speed each year has increased. (There are) more players coming from Japan or the States. It’s attractive because it’s good baseball.”

There is, of course, a cost to that. the Mexican League was once a pathway for younger Mexican players to advance, perhaps get noticed. Now their opportunities are being taken by American players.

“It has taken away from what I call the traditional Mexican League,” said Diablos manager Bundy, who grew up in Virginia and first experienced the league as a player in the 1980s. “Obviously, it has definitely taken opportunities away from the younger Mexican players.”

But as the renovated stadiums fill up and more recognizable names fill out the rosters, the dynamic of the league is evolving.

When former big leaguers Matt Adams and Tres Barrera arrived this year, Rodriguez said each had the same reaction: “This is actually pretty good.”

“It’s a 4-A, they call it,” he said. “I’ve never played in affiliated baseball, (but) they say it’s better than Triple A.”

The exact level remains somewhat debatable, in part because of expansion and the gap between the top and bottom. But many players who show up from Triple A are surprised by the league’s intense focus on winning. Danny Salazar, the former Cleveland starter, spent a few days with the Diablos earlier this summer before being moved for poor performance. The Toros, meanwhile, fired their manager in July despite having qualified for the playoffs.

“The (Mexican) managerial job is actually one of the most insecure jobs ever,” Bundy said. “I think half the managers since the start of the year have been fired.”

Fortunately, Bundy didn’t have to worry about that. The Diablos finished the regular season 71-19, the best record in LMB history, entered the playoffs as the top seed in the South division, and are currently facing Oaxaca in the equivalent of the league championship series. But after that? There are no guarantees.

For many former big-leaguers in Mexico, the focus is on the next step. Earlier this summer, former Marlins outfielder Jerar Encarnacion had begun the season with Oaxaca, where he batted .366 with 19 homers in 26 games. The performance led to a minor-league contract with the Giants, and by early August, he was back in the majors.

For a pitcher like Ryan Meisinger, it was a reminder of the goal. There was likely no more indy ball in his future, he said. But he planned to go to the Dominican this winter, where he hoped he might attract the eye of scouts.

“I would love,” he said, “to go pitch in Japan next year.”

(The Diablos Rojos’ mascot, Rocco, encourages the crowd in Mexico City earlier this year: Alfredo Estrella / AFP via Getty Images)