Frederich Cepeda and a new "hallway" hire

Another "backroom" signing features Frederich Cepeda. For several days now, numerous sources have been pinning him back on Mexican baseball for next year, this time with the Campeche Pirates.

Although the team itself announced it on its official Facebook and Twitter profiles, no one with a shred of common sense could assume its signing and participation in the 2020 season is a given.

The Sancti Spiritus native, a star of the World Baseball Classics and a pioneer in Cuban baseball recruiting, went from being announced with great fanfare prior to his mission to the Japanese National Baseball Team (NPB) back in 2014 to living off the back-and-forth, making and unmaking deals once his destination drew closer to the island. In both Mexico and Colombia, Cepeda had to sit and wait, and he must still be wondering what happened in the Tijuana Bulls-Tabasco Olmecas trade, after a notable first experience in Aztec land.

In January 2019, Cepeda would explain to the newspaper Escambray: “…personally, no one has come to me and told me: look, they've already traded you, look, they're going to sign you at such and such a time, look, you're hired. I left there with a dream. They told me I was going to return to Tijuana, and now I see on the news that they traded me.”

Questioned about this, Higinio Vélez, president of the Cuban Baseball Federation, had explained to the journalist Elsa Ramos each of the steps that follow the signing of a Cuban baseball player, to then close with a phrase that could well describe the (in)volution that the island's national sport still presents in terms of contracts: "For (all) that, it is unpredictable and nobody knows the exact day he will leave."

It was just now that the management of Los Olmecas de Tabasco announced that they would be giving up "the return rights of Cuban Frederich Cepeda" in a triple trade with the Campeche Pirates that also involved catcher Eduardo Santos and Mexican-American pitcher Isacc Rodríguez. This means, on the one hand, that the ball is in Los Filibusteros' court.

It is not surprising then that the announcement of the possible contract has only been replicated from Mexican sources without any further investigation.cucI've never even read the word of the Cuban Baseball Federation or the athlete himself. Although, given what we've seen, Cuban baseball players have very little to say about their future beyond signing whatever offers appear and waiting patiently while they train for a competition and the call about an imminent flight catches them off guard on a Yutong trip to any province.