Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association announced Tuesday that the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks will play a two-game series in Mexico City at Alfredo Harp Helu Stadium during the 2020 regular season.
The mid-April series will mark the first MLB games to be played at the stadium, which was completed in March and seats roughly 20,000. It will also be the first time that Mexico City hosts regular season MLB games.
The stadium is home to the Mexican League team Diablos Rojos del Mexico and was built by Mexican businessman and Padres minority owner Alfredo Harp Helu.
“Our connections to Mexico run deep, including Alfredo’s part ownership of the Padres and our bi-national fan base that extends into Baja California and throughout the country,” Padres President of Baseball Operations Erik Greupner said. “We are thrilled to compete in Mexico’s capital city and showcase our players on a global scale.”
The Padres most recently played south of the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018, when they faced the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series at Monterrey’s Estadio de Beisbol. In the first game, four Dodgers pitchers combined for the first such no-hitter outside the U.S. or Canada. The Padres would win the final two games of the series.
A team of Padres prospects played the Diablos Rojos at Alfredo Harp Helu Stadium earlier this year to christen its opening.
That team, which included top pitching prospect MacKenzie Gore and Diablos Rojos alumni Tirso Ornelas and Andres Munoz, would go on to beat the Diablos Rojos in both games by scores of 11-1 and 9-6.
Mexico City has hosted MLB spring training games at the Diablos Rojos’ old stadiums, Fray Nano and Foro Sol, in multiple seasons, most recently in 2016. Foro Sol also hosted opening round games during the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
Information on the April 18-19 game times and tickets will be released at a later date, according to MLB officials.
— City News Service