Chris Nowak is the latter. After bouncing around the minor-league systems of Tampa Bay and Milwaukee for the past eight years, the tall 28-year-old found himself entering this off-season without a job. When his agent contacted him in early December about an opportunity in scout-heavy Mazatlán — scouts apparently enjoy the beach — he jumped at it. Sweetening the deal was that Cruz told Nowak they would use the month of December as a type of audition and that if Nowak played well enough they would bring him back next year.

But just five games and 21 at-bats into that audition, Nowak was let go. Cruz, still simmering from Wednesday night’s loss, claimed third baseman Marshall McDougall off Guasave’s roster early Thursday morning through a loophole in the Mexican-league rules, jettisoned Nowak in the process. He called McDougall at his hotel and told him that when he arrived at the stadium that afternoon, he would be changing in the home clubhouse, not the visitor’s. He never did call Nowak. “I showed up for the game and he called me in. He just said it was nothing I did. It wasn’t because of my play or anything like that,” Nowak says. “He said the opportunity to get Marshall was a big deal to them.”

The unfortunate thing about being a baseball player is you don’t get to write your own resumé. When scouts and major-league executives look at Nowak’s stats and see a guy who could only stick with a Mexican team for five games and hit just .238 in that time, it doesn’t bode well. “I would’ve loved to just get 20 more at-bats and then I would’ve been fine with them doing whatever,” Nowak says. “I had a couple bad at-bats, but it’s my first time seeing live pitching in two months. And they knew that.”

Of course, the management in Mazatlán has other concerns. Tuesday’s attendance was noticeably thin and by Wednesday the members of the sparse crowd who did show up were passing around paper bags to cover their faces. You can’t drink a beer through a paper bag.