Edgar Muñoz

Edgar Enrique Muñoz‏‎ Mendoza

• Bats Both, Throws Right
• Height 5' 8", Weight 150-172 lb.

• Born October 30, 1991 in Cristóbal, Colón Panama

BR register page

Biographical Information

Edgar Muñoz played five seasons in the minors and has appeared for the Panamanian national team.

He was signed by Pittsburgh Pirates scouts Rene Gayo and Jose Pineda in May 2011. He had a strong debut for the VSL Pirates that summer, hitting .360/.464/.439 with 42 runs in 52 games. He was 4th in the Venezuelan Summer League in average (between Willians Astudillo and Ramon Coronel), tied Dilson Herrera for 8th in runs, tied Rusbel Farinez for 3rd with 20 steals (but led with 15 times caught stealing) and was second in OBP (.039 behind future big leaguer Oscar Hernandez). In 2012, he moved up to the Dominican Summer League and saw his production drop - .239/.336/.287 between the DSL Pirates 1 and DSL Pirates 2. In '13, he was 4 for 10 with two walks for the DSL Pirates 2.

Muñoz moved from the outfield to the infield with the 2014 Bristol Pirates (.259/.304/.343 in 31 G) and GCL Pirates (6 for 17, 2B, HR). In the 2014 Central American and Caribbean Games, he started at second base for Panama and hit .375/.445/.625 while fielding .945. He was among the tourney leaders in average (9th, between Hebert Lara and Frederich Cepeda) and slugging (9th, between Víctor Méndez and Luis Suárez). Only Javier Dominguez had a better OPS for Panama. Let go by Pittsburgh, he was picked up by the independent Garden City Wind and hit .440/.470/.629 with 38 runs in 36 games in the high-scoring Pecos League. Even accounting for the high offensive levels, he fared well, having the second-best average among players with 100+ at-bats.

The Cristóbal native got Panama's first hit of the 2016 World Baseball Classic Qualifiers, off Owen Ozanich of France, and scored on a sacrifice fly by Carlos Ruiz, but he was 0 for 7 with a RBI the rest of the qualifiers. He did a very good job as Panama's leadoff man in the 2017 Bolivarian Games, scoring four runs against Peru including a homer off Gianpierre Reaño in an opening rout and finishing with a batting line of .333/.385/.458 with eight runs in five games. In the Gold Medal Game, he was 1 for 5 with two runs and a RBI in a 6-4 loss to host Colombia. He led the event in runs (3 ahead of Jesús Mogollón, Gerald Chin and Jorge Bishop), tied for first with one homer and was third with eight hits (one behind Jonathan Saavedra and Eduardo Thomas Jr. and one more than Peru's entire lineup mustered in four games).

He kept on rolling the next month at the 2017 Central American Games. Again leading off for Panama, he was 3 for 4 with two RBI in the opener against Costa Rica and went 4 for 4 with two runs and three RBI versus Guatemala. He finished the round-robin phase at .474/.600/.579 on offense with 7 runs in five games. He was third in average (behind Darrel Campbell and Juan Colato), 5th in slugging, 3rd in OBP (after Campbell and Ofilio Castro), tied Ismael Munguía, Ibrahim McKenzie and Fabián Vizcaíno for 2nd in runs (one behind Chin) and tied Chin for second in hits (one behind Colato). He got Panama's lone run in a 3-1 Gold Medal Game loss to host Nicaragua, reaching on an Iván Marín error then coming around on a hit by Chin two batters later. That gave him the tie with Chin for the most runs in the event, giving him two straight international tournaments in which he scored more runs than any other player.