A Career Year During a Tough Season – If you ever needed more evidence that pitching wins and losses are meaningless, look no further than Ronnie Williams, who’s having the best year of his career so far with the Leones de Yucatan.
Williams, 30, is just 4-2 in 14 starts this season and has a 2.34 ERA over 65 1/3 innings, pitching for a last-place Leones team that is 14 games under .500 and 7 1/2 games out of the last playoff spot in the Zona Sur.
Quietly, Williams is putting together an outstanding season that shouldn’t be overlooked. In nine of his 14 starts, Williams has thrown five or more innings while allowing three or fewer runs, and he’s fourth in the league with 67 strikeouts against just 27 walks. He has a 1.19 WHIP and opponents are batting just .216 against him.
And as the season has gone on, Williams has only gotten better. He hasn’t allowed a run in his last 17 innings of work over three starts and has struck out 19 while walking three, allowing just four hits in that span.
The Leones are 7-7 when Williams starts, and as was noted in this space before, Yucatan just isn’t scoring runs. The 274 runs they’ve scored this season are the fewest in the league. It’s hard to win baseball games when you don’t score runs, but Ronnie Williams is giving them a chance every time out, and sometimes, that’s all that can be asked for from a starter.
Don’t be surprised if Williams gets moved to a contender before the end of the season — or even signed to a deal in affiliated baseball as the Major League Baseball season continues to chew up arms.
Enrique Reyes Fired By Rieleros de Aguascalientes – While the 2026 season in the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol hasn’t seen the kind of turnover in the managerial ranks as the 2025 campaign did, heads are starting to roll higher up in the standings.
Prior to Tuesday’s series opener against the Zona Norte-leading Toros de Tijuana, Enrique Reyes was let go by the Rieleros de Aguascalientes after going 29-35 through the first 64 games of the season. Adán Muñoz took over the team and won his managerial debut 9-4.
Aguascalientes is the third managing job for Munoz, who led Quintana Roo to a 62-57 record in 2019, when the LMB played a 120-game season, and went 32-55 with the Piratas de Campeche in 2024.
The Rieleros enter Wednesday night’s action tied with the Algodoneros de Union Laguna for the sixth and final playoff spot in the Zona Norte. Both teams are 14 1/2 games behind the first place Toros de Tijuana and three games back of the fifth-place Acereros de Monclova.
The top three teams in each division get home field advantage for the first round of the playoffs.
Photo: Photo: Ronnie Williams gave the Leones a quality start, throwing six scoreless innings where he allowed just one hit and one walk and struck out 10. (Photo courtesy of the Leones de Yucatan)
