DODGERS The ♥PUIG♥ Thread

pretty sure his suggestion was tongue in cheek

totally agree
plus, and for the same reason, a lot of the better pitchers are in aa as well

then say that damn it!!!

it's a moot point anyway
he won't be in the minors very long
we didn't pay him $42MM to ride buses

that's not necessarily a bad thing
maybe some other team will see it that way ray: and offer us something
or maybe he'll somehow replicate his final season in sf...

 

yeah, we need to dump that jim dude

 

i think he meant jim's ass

 

i understand the "no need to rush him" mentality
and don't (necessarily) disagree
but if we didn't have crawford and/or the lf job were open
would there be any doubt who'd get the call?

Dodgers' Yasiel Puig impresses countryman
Outfielder, 22, has another big Cactus League game, this time against the Oakland Athletics and fellow Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes, who believes Puig is ready for the major leagues.
By Dylan Hernandez
March 19, 2013, 8:37 p.m.

PHOENIX — Yasiel Puig is ready to play in the major leagues.

That was the opinion offered Tuesday by fellow Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes, who finished second in American League rookie-of-the-year balloting last season while leading the Oakland Athletics to a division title.

"To me and to anyone who's seen what he's done, he's ready," Cespedes said.

Puig is batting .500 for the Dodgers in the Cactus League. The 22-year-old outfielder was four for four in the Dodgers' 7-1 victory over the A's, including a two-run home run in the first inning that cleared Cespedes' head in left field.

Cespedes didn't play in the minors before joining the A's last year. He hit .292 with 23 home runs and 82 runs batted in. Asked whether he thought Puig could do something similar this year, Cespedes replied, "Of course. He can do even more."

Manager Don Mattingly said last week that Puig was "not really" under consideration for the opening-day roster. Asked Tuesday whether Puig could force him to change his mind, Mattingly wouldn't say.

General Manager Ned Colletti was equally evasive.

Part of that is because there isn't a place for Puig in an outfield that includes Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Carl Crawford. Crawford is recovering from elbow surgery, but Colletti thinks Crawford will be ready for opening day.

Puig's youth and inexperience are also a factors. He played only two seasons in Cuba's top league, compared to eight for Cespedes. Puig made only 95 plate appearances last year in the minor leagues.

"At this point, he's creating an expectation that he can't live up to, that nobody can live up to," Mattingly said. "I just try to temper it, where we take a realistic look."

If the Dodgers decide not to include him on their opening-day roster, Puig said, "I wouldn't understand it, but I would have to. Wherever they want to send me, I'll go with God."

In the last week, Mattingly and Kemp have compared Puig to Bo Jackson. In terms of the buzz he has created, Colletti said Puig reminded him of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire when they were breaking into the majors. A National League scout who watched Puig on Tuesday said the confidence he projects made him think of Cespedes.

"He expects to do well," the scout said.

The scout was particularly impressed with Puig's home run at-bat. Puig fell behind in the count, 0 and 2. He worked the count full, then blasted a hanging curveball over the left-field wall.

"He fouled off some tough pitches inside to keep the at-bat alive," the scout said.

Puig has some rough edges, as he showed when his failure to run hard out of the batter's box cost him a double and got him thrown out at second base. The mistake might have cost Puig the cycle, as he tripled in his final at-bat.

Based on his personal experience, Cespedes thinks the greatest adjustment Puig will face will be acclimating himself to major league pitching.

"The quality of pitching is a lot higher here," Cespedes said. "They throw harder. They throw a greater variety of pitches. In Cuba, you don't see the changeup. Here, they use it a lot."

Cespedes and Puig knew each other from their days as players on rival teams in the Cuban league. They spoke before the game Tuesday, asking each other about their families. As it turned out, Puig's parents and sister were visiting him from Miami and were in the stands.

Before they parted ways and returned to their respective dugouts, Cespedes offered Puig some advice.

"I told him that regardless of where he starts, that if they send him down, to play hard and show what he can do," Cespedes said. "You never know when you can get called up."​

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Kemp on Puig:

"I think he's way stronger than me," Kemp said. "He might have more power than me. He's a monster, man. He's big. When everybody sees him, they think about Bo Jackson. Puig is a five-tool athlete that can do a lot in the big leagues and help our team one of these days."​

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/fanta...-report-greinke-brace-bad-145130002--mlb.html

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I'm getting moist.

 

and hanley has... oops, my bad

 

True story: Legend of Yasiel Puig could only grow if phenom joins Dodgers for season's start
Jeff Passan | Yahoo! 5 hours ago


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.

Puig doesn't run as well as Bo Jackson, but he does have tremendous power. (AP)To that, Yoenis Cespedes says: Experience is overrated. The Oakland A's outfielder arrived from Cuba last season, spent not a second in the minor leagues and destroyed American League pitching from the jump. And even though he's just one set of eyes, Cespedes' sentiment echoes plenty of others': Puig, he says, is more than ready.

Quelling assimilation concerns is the presence of Eddie Oropesa, the former big league pitcher whom the Dodgers brought on to look after Puig, much like the A's did with Ariel Prieto and Cespedes. While Oropesa doesn't eliminate Puig getting into off-the-field trouble, his presence mitigates the possibility. He gets along famously with teammates Latin, American and, in Ryu's case, Korean. His English vocabulary has expanded rapidly. And the in-game growth from Puig even in spring training – the shortening of his swing with hitting coach Mark McGwire to prevent his front side from leaking – has taken the power knob and cranked it to 11.

"We'll see if they keep him," Oropesa said. "The way he play now … you see what's going on."

So do the Dodgers, though the decision on Puig involves enough people that it can't take place in the keep-your-25-best vacuum. Crawford's return from Tommy John surgery complicates things. If he is ready April 1 for the season opener against the defending champion Giants, Puig is far less likely to stay. The Dodgers want him to play every day. Their current outfield of Crawford, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have contracts worth a combined $387 million.

"We've got a pretty sexy outfield even without him," Dodgers starter Zack Greinke said.

Indeed, though freeing up a spot for Puig by trading Crawford or Ethier is a possibility. One of the great advantages of the $7 billion local-television deal the Dodgers signed this offseason is paying the freight for trading partners in exchange for a greater haul of talent. Which means that if the Dodgers find a shortstop or third baseman they like – because Luis Cruz and Juan Uribe aren't exactly bright spots for the highest-paid team in the history of professional sports – they could offer players and cash.

"Send me Ethier and $85 million," said one GM, referring to the amount owed on the right fielder's five-year contract, "and I'll give you whoever you want."

These Dodgers are fascinating, and Puig adds another layer of intrigue. Over the last week, as he has wrecked major league pitching, Puig prompted the Dodgers to soften their stance on his immediate big league prospects from a firm "no" to a "well, maybe, possibly, could be – but probably not."

The Ramirez injury should tip the scales the other way. In a division expected to be as close as the NL West, one or two victories might mean the difference between an October of glory and one spent at home. If the Dodgers crave the division like they say they do, starting Puig's service-time clock early would be a worthwhile sacrifice, just like it was when the Atlanta Braves rode a full year of Jason Heyward to the postseason.

Manager Don Mattingly told reporters Thursday that Puig and the shortstop hole have nothing to do with one another. He didn't acknowledge that Ramirez, his No. 5 hitter, was missing, and that a lineup with Cruz, Uribe, Mark Ellis and the pitcher hitting can use as much help as possible.

And considering it's so early in the Puig annals, maybe some piece of The Legend will turn out to be true. Maybe, just maybe, Puig can do anything.

"Hey, Puig," reliever Peter Moylan said. "Can you play shortstop?"

"Shortstop?" Puig said. "That's easy, papi."

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i love dre
but i make that deal in a nanosec