Tucson Baseball Team to include high level of talent wanting to play here during winter

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Tucson Baseball Team owner Victor Cuevas Jr. wants to sell the importance of his operation to folks in Southern Arizona to boost ticket sales and gather a strong following heading into the start of the inaugural season here in October at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium.

He knows the Tucson area, starved for professional baseball for more than a decade, does not need hyperbole, only hope.

He has been part of this community since the 1980s, when his father Victor Sr. bought a home in Tucson. He attended Tucson Toros games when they were the talk of the town, winning Pacific Coast League championships in 1991 and 1993.

He knows professional baseball can thrive here if the community is provided reasons to rally around the team — winning, sound baseball, recognizable players, fun promotions, quality entertainment in addition to the games, etc.

“This is the top league in Mexico, clear and simple,” Cuevas said of the ARCO Mexican Pacific League (Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacífico) during Wednesday’s press conference. “We’re also the third-largest league in the world. There’s the MLB, Japan, and then us. I want everybody to grasp what we’re getting into.

“The immediate goal is to have the community embrace their team.”

RELATED
— Kevin Murphy details important comments made during the Tucson Baseball Team’s introductory press conference Wednesday and offers a timeline of professional baseball in Tucson
— The Tucson Baseball Team 2025-26 schedule
— Access to purchase season tickets (three different plans available)

Cuevas, whose family is long-time owners of the Mayos de Novojoa, said the Novojoa community in Sonora did not embrace the team enough, prompting the relocation to Tucson.

The average attendance of games at Manuel “Ciclón” Echeverría Stadium (capacity 11,500) at Novojoa was only 3,844 last season, last in the league. The average attendance in the league was 7,312. Tomateros de Culiacan led the league with 11,818 fans per game.

“Our league is growing really fast, and the city (Novojoa) where we used to play wasn’t, so we needed to move,” Cuevas said. “We needed to find a city of about 600,000 to 1 million in population, and to us, Tucson was really natural.

“It’s in our playing zone. We have working agreements with MLB. We meet every summer, and two years ago, they suggested, ‘We need a team from your league in Arizona.’ So the owners got together, we as an organization got together, and we started working to that goal.”

Cuevas said the team’s goal is to sell at least 4,000 season tickets by Opening Day on Oct. 16 against the Naranjeros de Hermosillo.

Sarah Horvath, the new director of the Kino Sports Complex and her staff, have made attending games and events at the Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium and the Kino Annex Fields much more inviting and fan-friendly than the atmosphere was in recent years. Stadium workers are more about servicing fans than being officious with them within the framework of policies.

An interesting note about the home schedule: Games are scheduled on Halloween against Los Mochis and Thanksgiving against Guasave. The home schedule is posted below. Game times have yet to be announced.  

The games will be televised in Mexico and streamed on YouTube. The organization is looking for a television partner to broadcast the games in the United States.

Cuevas realizes that an important way to draw consistently strong, supportive crowds is through developing a fan base comprised of families with young baseball players. Plans include many community functions with youth baseball organizations involving the Tucson Baseball Team’s players and coaching staff.

That begs the question: Who is on the team?

With the team transitioning from Novojoa to Tucson, the roster is unsettled. What is known as of now is the manager is Willie Romero, who managed the Mayos when they advanced to the finals in 2017-18. Romero was the manager of the Los Angeles Angels’ Single-A affiliate last season and is the manager of the Mexican Baseball League’s team in Olmecas this summer.

Cuevas’ son, Victor III, was general manager at one time, but now he oversees the operations of the team. The general manager is Esteban Haro, a former standout pitcher with Novojoa.

Victor Cuevas III could not name potential players because of ongoing negotiations.

The Mexican-born players on the roster last winter are potential candidates to fill a majority of the 30 spots on the roster. One of them is third baseman Ramon Mendoza, who is with Double-A Springfield (Mo.) of the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He is a teammate at Springfield with former Arizona outfielder Chase Davis.

Cuevas III mentioned that Baltimore Orioles farmhand Carlos Tavera is an import player (born in Fort Worth, Texas) who the Tucson Baseball Team wants to return after he pitched at Novojoa during the winter. Each team can keep three import players from year to year. A team can have eight imports overall.

Tavera, a 6-foot-1 right-hander who is 26, has pitched 15 innings of relief in 11 appearances this summer for Triple-A Norfolk (Va.) and he is 0-1 with a 2.40 ERA with 16 strikeouts and nine walks.

“He’s excited about it; he wants to be here,” Cuevas III said. “We still gotta let his season run out. He’s a pitcher, so Baltimore has to decide if he is able to pitch more innings during the winter.”

Tucson Baseball Team co-owner Victor Cuevas III talks about what the composition of the team will be like under manager Willie Romero when the team takes the field Oct. 16 on Opening Day of the Mexican Pacific League. Strong possibility that local players in high MLB farm-system… pic.twitter.com/ThhUdvNmJ0

— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) June 18, 2025

The Mexican Pacific League draft for the five imports who play in the Mexican Baseball League during the summer is scheduled for July 3, along with a draft of Mexican nationals. The talent pool for the Mexican-born prospects includes players as young as 13 years old, according to Cuevas III.

The players at that age are taking part in baseball academies in Sonora.

“It might take a few years until you see the guys that we’re going to draft on that draft, but they belong to the roster now,” Cuevas III said. “After that draft ends, we get the import draft. That takes care of all the imports that play in Mexico during the summer.

“We get four rounds (of the import draft), and after that, it’s a negotiation between your picks, and hopefully we will get them here in Tucson. After the draft is done, we get a free agency with the imports. If the import is not drafted, you can still talk to him and bring him over, plus we get all the Triple-A, Double-A, and Single-A players that might be able to come, depending on the permission from the MLB team.”

Because the Tucson Baseball Team is the first affiliate in the history of the Mexican Pacific League to be in the United States, Cuevas III anticipates many American players, especially those locally and living in the Phoenix area, to inquire about playing while staying close to family during the winter.

“I’m not gonna say names right now, but we’re looking at some players that we don’t know if they’re going to be able to (play), but they’re in Triple-A and Double-A that are from Nogales and Tucson,” Cuevas III said. “We do have a lot of players interested in playing for us. They’re not local, but they live in Phoenix.

“They have their families there, and they’re really interested in being close to them during the winter season. Hopefully, we’re gonna get some of those guys.”

Cuevas III stated that in addition to taking many phone calls from players interested in playing in Tucson because of its proximity to where they live or train during the winter, he also has heard from MLB teams that will be more inclined to send scouts and front-office personnel to Tucson during the winter than to Mexico because of the logistics.

“We got a couple of calls from MLB teams, and they’re like, ‘Now that you’re in Tucson, we might be able to get some more people, guys in your organization,” Cuevas III said. “So it’s amazing. It’s going to be a good time.”

MEXICAN-BORN PLAYERS ON MAYOS DE NAVOJOA’S 2024-25 ROSTER

These are the Mexican-born players who were on the Mayos de Novojoa’s roster last season. Some of these players will likely be part of the Tucson Baseball Team but no official announcement has been made of the roster because of ongoing negotiations.

Octavio Acosta, RHP
Luis Amador, C
Esteban Bloch, RHP
Carlos Bustamante, RHP
Marco Chicuate, C/LF
Luis Cruz, INF
Miguel Guzman, OF/1B
Francisco Haro, RHP
Luis Juarez, DH/C/LF
Edgar Lugo, 2B/OF
Jose Medina, LHP
Damian Mendoza, RHP
Ramon Mendoza, INF
Ciro Norzagaray, INF
Jonathan Partida, LHP
Francisco Perez, C/1B
Sergio Perez, OF
Erick Preciado, RHP
Missael Rivera, 2B
Dalton Rodriguez, RHP
Denny Roman, LHP
Agustin Ruiz, OF
Asael Sanchez, OF/1B
Jorge Sauceda, RHP
Juan Uriarte, C/LF
Edwyn Valle, RHP
Luis Villavicencio, RHP
Gilberto Vizcarra, C
Daniel Zazueta, LHP

MORE VIDEOS FROM WEDNESDAY’S INTRODUCTORY PRESS CONFERENCE

FOLLOW @JAVIERJMORALES ON TWITTER!

ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.