The Giants played in the first ever regular season MLB game in Mexico City on Saturday, lost it, and then proved that wasn’t a fluke by also losing on Sunday. For baseball fans not used to seeing games played at such a high elevation — over 7,000 feet, if you didn’t hear over the weekend — it was a novel way of watching the sport.
It also kinda sucked?
I mean, don’t get me wrong: the first few innings were fun. The Padres took the lead, then the Giants answered, then the Padres answered the answer, then the Giants put up a crooked number, then the Padres answered yet again…it was a whirlwind of dingers and offense. But there came a point — this point was the top of the 7th, for the record — when the Giants scored yet again, taking a one-run lead on a David Villar home run, when the future snapped into focus, crystal clear like a mountain spring:
The Giants were immediately going to lose this lead.
There was no doubt. There were no ifs, no maybes, no uncertainty at all. The Giants would lose the lead, and they would do it in the bottom of the inning. It was not worth considering any other option, because this was the natural order of the universe. I am generally a very science-based rational person but I make an exception for The Sports Vibes, and in this case The Sports Vibes were screaming at me.
Because that game was bullshit. Guys were hitting routine pop flies and they were leaving the park. The entire strategy of the game became just get the ball in the air. Not hit the ball hard and get it in the air, and not get it in the air at the right launch angle. Just get it in the air. Hit it up and hope something good happens, because a lot of the time you’ll be right.
The game was different. The game was stupid. The game was meaningless.
Because ordinarily, there is tension in a one-run game. A one-run game is full of tension. Last night, as the Giants clung to their one-run lead for several innings before giving up the tying run, and then giving up 5 more a couple innings later, you could see them pulling it out without adding on to their lead. It wasn’t likely, and it didn’t end up happening, but it was possible.
There was none of that in Mexico City. There was no real way to pitch there, because every other fly ball turned into a homer. Ah, you might be saying, then just induce ground balls. You can have some success with that for a while, but that was a hard, fast infield, designed to get ground balls through. Ah, you might be saying again, then the pitcher will simply have to redouble his efforts and strike batters out. Yes, that would be great, except in the thin mountain air, it’s nearly impossible to throw a quality breaking pitch, which makes it awfully difficult to rack up strikeouts.
You can pitch effectively for a while — Alex Cobb threw four great innings on Sunday before running into trouble in the fifth — but eventually, that park and that altitude will catch up to you. It was a brand of baseball that got very tiring very quickly.
Because in addition to the pitchers getting undeservingly destroyed, the hitters are getting undeservingly rewarded. Fernando Tatis Jr homered on a pitch he hit 95 MPH. A Machado homer left his bat at 97.6 MPH. JD Davis homered on a pitch he hit 96 MPH. Those balls just were not hit hard enough to have gone out of a stadium at sea level, or even a couple thousand feet above sea level. They’d have been wall-scraper at Coors, pre-humidor. Baseball is just an entirely different sport when those kinds of balls are home runs, and it’s a worse one.
So I don’t like it. I don’t like it aesthetically, or emotionally, or statistically. The game in Mexico City is bad.
But it’s still cool as hell to be there.
It is a good thing for the Giants and Padres to play in Mexico City. It is a good thing to bring the major league game to a new location. It’s a good thing to try something new. It’s a good thing to let about 20,000 people in Mexico City see the major league game in person. It’s a good thing for Gabe Kapler to go get some delicious tacos It’s even a good thing to put up these things, which are technically monstrosities but still delightful:
Other than the results and aesthetics of the games, it was a good experience and a good idea. I entirely approve of bringing baseball to different markets.
So tweak it. Fix it. Find solutions. Come back. Soak in the crowd, but do it more responsibly. Do it in a way that doesn’t change how the game is played. I don’t want to say that major league teams have to play in Monterrey (which they’ve done a few times) and never Mexico City because of the altitude, but something has to be done. They shouldn’t play games like this in this place again, but they should play in this place again.
Just don’t bring the Giants back for a few years. They’ve done enough guinea pigging.
I live in MX half the year, and luv Mehicanos and beisbol and beisbol in Mehico. Vallarta has a nice little stadium (with GRASS!), where the taxistas team play, and NCAA women have an tournament every year. It was great to see all the fans digging MLB in D.F. (Mexico City) this weekend.
So now all the cumbaya is over, make the dogers go there next year (and every year), ok? How many Gigantes are gonna wind up on the IL after 2 games of pong in that concrete launching pad?
I'm guessing Yaz, BC35, Manea, Cobb, and one of the catchers, who both got their bells rung in the two games. The failure to use the humidor to slow down the baseball was criminal. And the outfield doesn't even have a warning track?!?
Señor Helü needs to go back to the drawing board before MLB begins regular scheduling in his stadium.
(Have I said how much I hate astroturf ballyards??)