As the start of the French D1 baseball league approaches, the most pressing question right now might be what the rosters of the various participating teams will look like.
For that, unfortunately, we’ll just have to wait. Until when? Good question. Last season, the complete team lists were never published on the FFBS website, the governing body of French baseball. Let’s hope that’s not the case this time.
What we can report is that in a few cases, teams have started to reveal the names of some foreign recruits – always a fun topic at this time of year! And it’s these players that Le Baseblog is focusing on in this second installment of our series on the new faces of D1.
At the start of the week, we focused on Markus Melendez (Metz), Héctor Velasquez (Sénart) and Steve Anderson (Montpellier). Then, two more players from across the Atlantic, including a very talented infielder from Argentina.
Agustín Tissera, Montigny Cougars
Argentina is well known as a source of top-level talent in fútbol. But baseball? Not so much.
And yet… as we highlighted in January, the sport has a relatively long history in the South American country, and a « winter » league – the LAB (Liga Argentina de Béisbol) – that has a surprising number of ties to French baseball.
It’s a league that Agustín Tissera knows VERY well, as he has just won a championship there (for the second time in the last three seasons) with the Córdoba Falcons, whom he joined in 2017, when the LAB was created.
The 28-year-old shortstop is a fan favorite in Córdoba, the second largest city in Argentina, and not just because he grew up there, in a neighborhood called Los Plátanos.
He has also been a constant star for the team, putting up fantastic numbers every season and even winning the league MVP in 2019, when he hit .448 (the highest average in the LAB), with 26 hits and 23 RBIs in just 19 games.
Tissera’s reputation isn’t limited to Argentina, where he is also a member of the national team. Between 2016 and 2018, he played professionally in Italy, as a member of the Macerata Angels, in Serie A2. And in 2020 and 2021, the talented Argentine played in the German Bundesliga, as a member of the Mannheim Tornados.
What Tissera hasn’t yet tried is French baseball, but that will change in just a few weeks, when he joins the Montigny Cougars, who finished strong last season, winning seven of their last eight regular-season games, but just missed out on qualifying for the playoffs.
« I have more team goals, » explained Tissera in a recent interview with his new team. « I come from an important club in Argentina and we always put the team ahead of the individual, it’s the common interest that must come first to win. »
Trevor Rogers, Metz Cometz
The next player on our list will have the chance to see Tissera and the Cougars up close this season. Because his new team, the Metz Cometz, is changing pools and will now play in Group A of D1, alongside Montigny, the Rouen Huskies, Paris UC and the Savigny Lions.
In other words, the competition will be tough, but with a number of new additions to their roster, the Cometz, who finished eighth out of 11 teams last year, are looking to bounce back.
One of these newcomers is Trevor Rogers, who grew up under the California sun and played at San Francisco State University (SFSU), a Division II school in the NCAA. The 23-year-old left-hander was an outstanding pitcher in high school, but played first base at the college level, collecting 73 hits in three seasons (including six home runs) with the SFSU Gators.
With Metz, Rogers will be called upon to fill both roles – as a hitter and a pitcher. It will be a challenge, but judging from his comments in a recent interview with the Cometz, it seems that becoming a two-way player is also part of what attracts the Californian to French baseball.
« Since I was a kid, I’ve played first base. And in parallel, I’ve pitched. So I know it very well, » said Rogers, who also played for two different teams in the summer collegiate leagues, the Covington Lumberjacks (2018) and the Geneva Red Wings (2019).
« The main thing for me is to differentiate the two roles, » he added. « Hitting is mostly a mental job, managing failure. In pitching, you have to be consistent. On some matchdays, I might struggle at the plate. But that must never impact my performance on the mound! »
Benjamin Witte
Photo credit: Hiep Than Trong
