Jeremy Peña of the Houston Astros celebrates after scoring a home run on the fourth inning during the MLB World Tour Mexico City Series between the Houston Astros and the Colorado Rockies at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú on April 28, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
For the second time in two years, Major League Baseball brought a pair of regular season games to Mexico City’s Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu.
The Houston Astros took both games from the Colorado Rockies, winning 12-4 on Saturday and 8-2 on Sunday. They improved to a still-dismal 9-19, while the Rockies fell to 7-20.
Here are five things from MLB’s second regular season visit to Mexico City.
1. MLB Is A Big Draw In Mexico – Both games drew more than 19,000 fans to Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu, which has a capacity for Liga Mexicana de Beisbol games of 20,062. The ballpark was packed to capacity, and this year’s series drew 39,775, passing last year’s total of 39,244. Capacity crowds for the four MLB regular season games over the past two years, plus crowds over 20,000 for the pair of exhibition games between the New York Yankees and the LMB’s Diablos Rojos del Mexico in March, bode well for future MLB visits to Mexico City – as well as the rest of the country.
2. Like Last Year, the First Game Was A Slugfest – Ok, there weren’t 11 homers by ten different players, but Saturday’s 12-4 Astros win did feature three homers, all of which traveled more than 400 feet in the thin air of Mexico City. Houston also pasted Colorado’s pitching staff for 15 hits, including doubles by Trey Cabbage and Mauricio Dubon and a triple by Yainer Diaz, who drove in three runs in the win.
3. Colorado’s Pitching Struggled – If any team’s pitchers would have less trouble adjusting to the altitude of Mexico City, it should be the Rockies. After all, playing 81 home games a mile above sea level a year breeds more familiarity with how much less a pitch will break in thinner air. Austin Gomber had a decent start, going seven innings and allowing four runs on six hits on Sunday, giving his club a chance to win. That said, the Rockies pitching got, in a word, rocked, surrendering 23 hits, seven walks, and hitting two batters in two games, and the bullpen allowed 13 earned runs in six innings of work. The Rockies are not a good team this year, and the pitching is the biggest reason.
4. Why Aren’t There More Series Like This? – The MLB World Tour, of which the Mexico City Series is a component event, has done a great job bringing MLB’s product to new cities, introducing the game abroad, and getting hometown fans to travel to new locales to see their favorite teams. If I had to guess, about half the fans at the 2023 MLB Mexico City Series were from San Diego or San Francisco.
So far this year, the MLB World Tour visited the Dominican Republic during spring training, Seoul, South Korea, to open the season, and Mexico City this past weekend. When MLB and the Major League Baseball Player’s Association negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement in 2026, expect MLB to push for more international series.
They—and the players—should be pushing for an expanded world tour. Bringing in new fans worldwide will only spread the gospel of baseball further, and doing so will only bring more revenue to MLB and the players.
But so far, the MLB World Tour is off to a great start and will return to Mexico City each of the next two seasons.
5. London Calling – Major League Baseball’s final international stop will be jolly old England, where the New York Mets will play the Philadelphia Phillies on June 8-9 at London Stadium. It’ll be the third visit to the home stadium of English soccer team West Ham United, after two-game sets between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox in 2019 and the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals last year.