It was roughly this time three years ago that Yasiel Puig was putting the finishing touches on a debut month for the ages. He was having the kind of impact that can only be measured in kilotons, and it was making the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ future look that much brighter.
Fast-forward to now, though, and Puig‘s place in the Dodgers’ future looks like something he’ll have to earn all over again.
The right fielder’s fourth major league season isn’t off to a good start. He’s hit only six home runs with a .249/.293/.373 slash line through 59 games. With that, numbers that started out strong in 2013 and 2014 have found some quicksand:
Even as Puig was struggling to match his usual production last season, you could still say with a straight face he was a good player when healthy. He technically qualified as an above-average hitter, and the defensive metrics also made him an above-average fielder.
It’s harder to make this rationalization in 2016. Puig‘s defense rates as excellent, but even excellent defense in right field isn’t enough to balance out what’s clearly below-average offense. He’s also missed a few weeks with a hamstring injury after similar issues sidelined him for half of last season. That makes the “when healthy” stipulation an awfully big sticking point.
On the bright side, Puig has showed signs of life since coming off the DL last Tuesday. He hit .368 with a home run in his first five games back and whacked a two-RBI single in Monday’s 5-4 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Per his manager, these are the signs of real progress.
“Before he went on the disabled list, he was kind of chasing hits,” Dave Roberts told Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register before Monday’s game. “He’s kind of reset. He’s slowing things down and, like we’ve talked about all year, taking balls and swinging at strikes. I think he’s doing a better job of that.”
However, Puig‘s history makes it hard to trust this will continue. And if he does indeed regress to a level of play in line with what he’s been doing recently, the Dodgers could decide it’s time to move on.
If this sounds like a familiar talking point, that’s because it’s one that first came up last summer.
The genesis seemed to be the unflattering/not-at-all surprising stories about Puig revealed in Molly Knight’s book on the Dodgers, The Best Team Money Can Buy (h/t Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports). Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe piggybacked on that when he reported the “noise is growing louder on Puig and his low favorability among teammates.”
Of course, none of this led to anything. As Jon Heyman, then of CBS Sports, reported, the Dodgers weren’t actually interested in moving Puig. They certainly would have had to sell low at the time. Holding on to Puig and hoping his character and production could improve was the right idea.
Heyman went on to report the Dodgers were sticking to this mindset in the winter, too, with the idea being to “try to reach” Puig and inspire him to change. In contrast to a predecessor who never seemed to know how to approach Puig, Roberts echoed that sentiment before spring training.
Despite some bad optics—including some harsh words from a former teammate and the father of a current teammate, as well as a bar fight that attracted an MLB investigation—things were actually looking good in spring training. Puig stopped being a nuisance and played the part of the good soldier, impressing even Clayton Kershaw.
“I’ve been really impressed with him this spring,” the Dodgers ace told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times (h/t Kyle Ringo of Yahoo Sports). “He’s putting in a lot of work.”
And so it went in early April. Puig hit .405 over his first 10 games, showing signs of finally putting it all back together.
Those signs have since disappeared, though. Puig‘s plate discipline is the worst it’s been since his rookie season. He’s also struggled to make good contact, entering Monday with 28.3 infield-fly-ball percentage and a career-worst 21.4 soft-hit percentage.
It’s not ability Puig is lacking. He’s still an otherworldly combination of power and speed. Rather, his challenge is still how to get his approach on par with his athletic gifts. As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs outlined in May, Puig is easily beaten when pitchers execute a hard-in, soft-away pattern against him. That’s nothing revolutionary, and that’s the problem.
Meanwhile, Puig the Good Soldier hasn’t been entirely capable of keeping Puig the Problem Child under wraps. Case in point, this incident in May:
Not hustling on that almost-dinger got Puig benched, with Roberts telling the media: “We talk about playing the game the right way. We’ve got to be accountable.”
All the ingredients for a fresh start in 2016 were there for Puig. But instead of a reborn player, at best he’s a slightly less controversial bad player. And if his current snapping-out-of-it moment doesn’t have life beyond the present, it’s easy to imagine the Dodgers trolling the trade waters for takers this winter.
This is assuming Puig doesn’t complicate things by forgoing the final two years of his seven-year, $42 million contract and opts into arbitration instead. But the way he’s going, doing so would activate the risk of him being nontendered. It would be wise for him to stick to his contract, in which case the Dodgers would only be tasked with moving about $17.5 million.
Any trade partner agreeing to take on all or some of that would only be getting a reclamation project. But with the free-agent market due to be light on talented hitters, taking such a chance on a player who’s still young and hypertalented wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
It’ll either be this, or the Dodgers will hold on to Puig and hope for the same kind of rebirth they were anticipating this season. But this notion doesn’t mesh with how the club’s Andrew Friedman- and Farhan Zaidi-led front office has operated. In purging guys like Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez, they’ve shown they’re not afraid to part ways with unwanted pieces from the previous regime.
Puig is in line to be next in line. If he wants to stick around in Los Angeles, he should finish 2016 with a bang reminiscent of his early years. Otherwise, his time with the Dodgers may end with a whimper.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Contract details courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
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