The increasingly compelling case for starting the otherworldly Yasiel Puig with the Dodgers: http://yhoo.it/11pMpVT
True story: Legend of Yasiel Puig could only grow if phenom joins...
Cuban prospect Yasiel Puig deserves a roster spot with the Dodgers after Hanley Ramirez's injury. Yasiel Puig has hit .521 in spring training for the Dodgers
Yahoo! Sports
GLENDALE, Ariz. – The Legend of Yasiel Puig is greater than The Truth of Yasiel Puig. The Legend plays like Bo Jackson. The Truth simply looks like Bo, a diesel 6-foot-3 and 245 pounds. The Legend hits .521 in spring training. The Truth understands spring-training statistics might as well be tabulated by Arthur Andersen. The Legend is an invincible athlete. The Truth lost three straight games of ping-pong Thursday to Hyun-Jin Ryu, who is the anti-athlete.
The Legend and The Truth do meet in a most important place: Both agree Puig can be a dynamic player for the Los Angeles Dodgers right now. And with Hanley Ramirez down, Carl Crawford's return for the season opener iffy, the reigning world champions in their division and a payroll well over $215 million, it adds up to an easy choice.
Yasiel Puig should start the season with the Dodgers.
"I don't think anyone in here would cry if that happened," Dodgers reliever J.P. Howell said. "You see what he's done. It's ridiculous. It's something different.
"It would be not a bad decision. At all."
Certainly there are drawbacks to the idea of plopping a 22-year-old Cuban in his first full season of professional baseball in front of 50,000 people in a city that can eat alive a kid who signed a $42 million contract after spending his first two decades living in a totalitarian country where there's no such thing as a working wage.
Puig, 22, signed a $42 million contract with the Dodgers. (USA Today Sports)That whole sentence is a pretty good argument against Puig, actually.
As are the financial considerations. By breaking camp with Puig, the Dodgers would start his service clock. If they wait about three weeks to call him up, it would ensure control of Puig through the 2019 season. Assuming he stays in the major leagues from his debut, starting him in L.A. this season means he could hit free agency following the 2018 season.
Rare is the player about whom teams concern themselves with free agency before he has spent a single day in the major leagues. That is what Puig does to people. The Bo Jackson comparison was silly. Puig does not run nearly as well as Bo, nor is his strong arm anything like Bo's RPG launcher. But the look. The swing. The ball trampolining off his bat. It screams superstar. It makes talent evaluators ignore that Puig is 48 at-bats into his spring and still hasn't walked.
Power overpowers everything else. It whispers sweet nothings into the ears of executives and seduces them. And Puig might have more raw power than anyone not named Stanton and Harper.
"If he's not a big leaguer now," said one longtime scout, "I don't know what a big leaguer is."
The scout, who has seen Puig twice, bases his opinion more on look than results. He recognizes the absurdity of Puig's numbers, though he doesn't quite understand those trying to argue it's coming against inferior competition. His contention is correct. In 26 at-bats against pitchers expected to start the season in the minor leagues, Puig is hitting .461/.444/.731. In 22 at-bats against major league pitchers, he is .591/.565/1.000.
Major leaguers he has faced: Jered Weaver, Mat Latos, Matt Harrison, Joe Nathan, Justin Masterson, Trevor Cahill, Mike Fiers, Wade Davis, Dan Straily, Jordan Norberto, Evan Scribner, Sam LeCure, Oliver Perez and Kevin Jepsen – almost all of whom every major league team would like on its roster.
"I take nothing from spring training," Dodgers utilityman Jerry Hairston Jr. said. "It really means nothing. For a young guy, it's good to make an impression. But I've seen too many guys with monster springs you never hear from again.
"Thing is, that's not going to happen with him."
With Puig, there is always a hedge. The Dodgers want to temper expectations not just for his sake but theirs. They planned on sending him to Double-A Chattanooga to start the season, and they don't want to be the team that allows five weeks of impressive results to derail a plan months in the making.
"I remember when I was with the Nationals in '11, and Bryce Harper was in camp," Hairston said. "He had a pretty good camp. And he was pissed he got sent out. I told him it was a good thing. It made him better. He struggled a little in Double-A, but it helped him work hard, work hard, work hard, and look what he's doing now."
That's another argument against Puig: He has spent all of 23 games in organized baseball – nine with the Dodgers' rookie-level club and 14 with their High-A affiliate. They worry about his fielding in a corner-outfield spot and his baserunning and all of the other excuses that serve as palatable rationale in case the reason for a potential demotion are service time-related.
