LAMP: A New Season Begins: Five Things To Know About Mexico’s Winter League

The Major League Baseball season isn’t over yet, but winter ball gets underway this evening with a pair of games in the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico.

If you’ve never watched baseball from one of the Latin American leagues that play when diamonds in the United States are frozen over, or at least in the southern states, chilled, you’ve been missing out on a fun, entertaining brand of baseball.

The rosters are volatile. Players who don’t perform and managers who don’t win quickly find themselves looking for new jobs. Notable current and former MLB players return to their hometowns to play on the teams they often grew up dreaming of playing for.

At the end of the winter ball season, there’s the Caribbean Series, a week-long showcase event that pits league champions against each other with national pride on the line.

Here are five things to know about the 2024-25 LAMP season, the league’s 80th, which starts tonight with the Sultanes de Monterrey facing the Aguilas de Mexicali and the Yaquis de Obregon facing the Naranjeros de Hermosillo.

Home Games In February—The LAMP will host the Caribbean Series this season from January 31 to February 7 at El Nido de Las Aguilas in Mexicali, Baja California. The champions of the four-member leagues of the Confederacion de Beisbol Profesional del Caribe and the Asia Breeze barnstorming team will compete.

Regular Season and Playoff Format – The LAMP plays a 68-game regular season, split into two halves. Each of the ten teams receives a number of points based on their position in the standings at the end of each half. Total points then rank the teams, and the top eight teams make the playoffs. The team with the most points is the first seed, and the team with the fewest is the eighth seed. There are three rounds of playoffs, all of which are best-of-seven series, with the winner advancing to the Caribbean Series.

Why Didn’t A Drafted Player Report? – Often, teams draft players in the LAMP’s Foreign and Mexican Player Drafts, but those players don’t play for that team over the winter. Sometimes, drafting a player is a way of playing defense. For example, the Naranjeros de Hermosillo drafted Trevor Bauer, the reigning pitcher of the year in the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol. This gives them the exclusive right to his services should he decide to pitch in the LAMP. If Bauer goes somewhere else to pitch in the winter, the Naranjeros will undoubtedly be disappointed, but less than they would be if they didn’t draft him, and he decided to pitch somewhere else in the LAMP.

Import Player Limit Raised – For 2024-25, teams in the LAMP will be allowed to have eight non-Mexican players for the first half of the season, with the limit reverting to seven for the second half. According to a league release announcing the rule change, the move is to better support the Mexico national team that will play in the WBSC Premier12 from November 9-24.

LAMP Makes Game Broadcasts Available Worldwide Via YouTube – Great news for baseball-starved fans! The LAMP has inked a deal with YouTube to stream every regular season and playoff game for 2024-25 via YouTube in high definition. The subscription fee of MX$149 per month is a bargain, working out to a little more than US$7.50. A league release announcing the move said that every game would be available both life and on-demand, and fans who subscribe will also have access to exclusive LAMP content. To subscribe, go to: https://www.youtube.com/@LigaArcoMX.

Photo: Trevor Bauer of the Diablos Rojos de Mexico was the top pick in the LAMP’s Foreign Player Draft for the 2024-25 season. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)