Monday, May 24, 2010

Tijuana Cimarrones stumble out of the gate

The Tijuana Cimarrones have had an odd start to their inaugural Golden Baseball League season.  On Friday, they were scheduled to play their home opener against the Chico Outlaws, but the game was cancelled due to problems with the lighting in the stadium. On top of that, Outlaw officials reported that they had difficulty getting information on the situation -- even well after the scheduled start time of the game.

If you go to the web site of the Golden Baseball League's official stats provider, Pointstreak.com, you'll notice that both the Chico Outlaws and the Tijuana Cimarrones are shown as having a record of 0-0. Apparently, the Tijuana team is having some trouble uploading data to Pointstreak and no information has been passed on to the stats provider as yet this season.

After some digging, I was able to discover that on Saturday, the Chico Outlaws ruined the Cimarrones' home opener by defeating their Mexican hosts 10-6. To make up for the Friday cancellation, the teams were to play a pair of 7-inning games on Sunday. In the first game of the double-header, there was a bizarre twist of fate. Pitcher Kris Honel, who was traded for Jose Lima last season, took to the mound a few short hours after Lima passed away. Honel then went on to pitch the second no-hitter in GBL history, shutting out Tijuana by a score of 20-0. No further details on this game are currently available and we have been unable to track down the result of the second game of the doubleheader.

All of this means that we're not actually sure if the Victoria Seals are in sole possession of first place in the North Division with a 2-1 record. Chico's record could be 2-0, 2-1 or 3-0. Hopefully the league will start getting some information out of Tijuana very soon.