Mexico is a bit of an engima. They play lots of baseball in Mexico, but it’s still far from the passion they have for futbol. They have a big professional league of their own that is regarded by MLB as being about AAA level, yet they don’t have that many Major Leaguers, although they are bolstered by some players who were born in the USA but spent much of their childhood in Mexico.

Therefore, Mexico is a bit harder to project, as they have very few MLB players but plenty of ballplayers overall. Thus this involved far more research and statistical searching to compile than, say, the previous WBC projections. That said, I have come up with a roster that fits the criteria I have been following so far:

As always, these are the rules of how I pick this roster, a combination of the official WBC rules on rosters and some unwritten rules that emerged during the first two tournaments:

• Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
• Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
• Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
• The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

Therefore, without further ado, my projections for the 2013 Mexican National Team (after the jump)

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