Padres Announce Mexico City Series

The Padres announced on Wednesday that they will play two games against the Astros in Mexico City as part of their Spring Training Schedule. The two games will be played on March 26th and 27th as the teams conclude their time in Arizona and get ready for the regular season to begin.

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The Padres have done a lot to help build the community between San Diego/MLB and their neighbors to the south in Mexico. This makes sense from a geographic perspective as well since the Astros will also have a pretty short trip back to Houston. It certainly beats having to play a couple of games in Australia a week before the season – then have a week of Spring Training – before starting the regular season like MLB tried a couple of years ago.

This is the first time that MLB has played in Mexico City since 2004. This will be the Padres seventh trip to Mexico and the team even played a couple of regular season games there in the late 1990’s in Monterrey, as reported by the Padres Corey Brock.

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Padres GM A.J. Preller and Astros GM Jeff Luhnow were both at the announcement event as well as Padres catcher Austin Hedges and Astros All-Star Second baseman Jose Altuve. Luhnow had this to say about the announcement:

"“I’m thrilled that the Astros will have the opportunity to play games in Mexico. The Mexican people have a great love for baseball, so I know these games will be very well received.”"

While the NFL expands its audience to Europe, baseball has consistently done things to raise it’s own profile across the globe. The World Baseball Classic has been considered a success overall and the fact that the US team can’t seem to win it just shows the globalization of the game. Spring Training starting is just over a month away.