On Saturday afternoon the Padres and Giants will play the first Major League Baseball games ever held in Mexico City. Both teams spent their off day on Friday around Mexico's capital city, many of them putting on baseball clinics for local kids.
San Diego has played seven games in Mexico before, the most of any big league club, but all of those were held in Monterrey. The chance to play in this city of 22 million is something completely different.
"Yeah, I think it's fantastic all the way around," says Padres manager Bob Melvin. "From the facilities inside, the weight room, the cages, the field looks in great shape. It looks like it's going to play fast. Looking forward to the atmosphere out there, as well. I think everybody's excited."
Then the skipper brought up what might be the most interesting aspect of this series.
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"The altitude, there's probably a chance you could see some balls flying out of here."
Estadio Alfred Harp Helu is 7,349 feet above sea level. That's almost half a mile HIGHER than Coors Field in Denver, a place many baseball players have compared to playing on Mount Everest. If that's the case then this weekend could be like playing on the moon. Petco Park has an elevation of 16 feet. Oracle Park in San Francisco sits at 15 feet above sea level.
So, yeah, this is going to be a bit of an adventure.
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Joe Musgrove will get the start and when he throws the first pitch it will set a record for the highest elevation ever for an MLB game. When you go up that high the first thing you think of is oxygen and how to get enough of it. The Grossmont High School alum already has a plan for that. He's become slightly famous for workouts in the pool, learning to hold his breath for long periods and control his breathing.
For this weekend he's taking breath control a step further.
"I've done a lot of the breathing stuff in the past so I'm kind of tapping back into that. I talked with my breath coach yesterday and he's given me some tips on how to kind of calibrate myself to the altitude as much as you can," says Musgrove. "Performance-wise I'm going to go out and pitch my game."
Which brings us to the other concern, especially for pitchers. The thinner the air, the less effective breaking balls become. Where the air is less dense there's less air friction so the seams spinning on curve balls and sliders don't have as much to work against, potentially flattening them out dramatically. Musgrove's spin rates are among the best in baseball (isn't that right, Buck Showalter?) so he could be in for an interesting afternoon.
Of course, he's already preparing for that, too.
"I played catch today, saw how the altitude affected pitch shapes a bit but overall my stuff felt really good and I'm going to attack them the way I usually do," says Joe.
Of course, as much consternation as the conditions cause pitchers ... hitters have got to LOVE this place. Last year the Diablos Rojos, who call the stadium home, led the Mexican League in scoring with just more than seven runs a game. While the stadium is 2,000 feet higher than Coors Field the fences are about 20 feet closer to home plate.
If the Padres struggling offense is ever going to have a weekend of run scoring gluttony you have to figure this is going to be it. We'll find out when Saturday's game starts at 3:05 pm Pacific time.
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