By Jon Weisman
Nearing the end of our long journey toward Spring Training, it feels like there’s been a lull in coverage of Yasiel Puig, which is entirely welcome given how much attention he figures to command once the Dodgers take the field.
So of course, leave it to me to disrupt that lull prematurely.
Puig is a member of that select group of players that comes as their own Rorschach test, and there might be no simpler way of illustrating it than this look at his exciting postseason stats:
- Puig has a .552 batting average on balls in play!
- Puig has struck out 40 percent of the time!
Neither of those stats has much meaning in a vacuum — in fact, each without the other obscures the reality of what Puig has done.
The boring truth is that Puig has been a medium player in the postseason: .364 on-base percentage, .412 slugging percentage, .775 OPS. Not a leader, not dead weight. An imperfect contributor.
Puig was benched for the final game of the 2014 National League Division Series, and not surprisingly, here was the reaction:
- You’ve got to be kidding!
- It’s about time!
No wonder: He had a .774 OPS and a 57.1 percent strikeout rate — extreme numbers that invited you to see what you wanted to see.
Of course, if you did nothing to Puig’s stats except replace his 22 playoff strikeouts with 22 pop outs and fly outs, you’d eliminate the intellectual struggle without really affecting his output. That should tell you something. But that’s not my point.
That Puig is striking out so frequently in the postseason certainly might indicate a guy who is not in the ideal frame of mind, but that’s not my point either.
Four playoff games are a ridiculously small sample size. Still, NMP.
I mean, you know my point, right? With Puig, it’s so easy to become the blind men with the elephant. But the elephant deserves to be seen in total, in all his flaws and glory.
Larger than life (via @CincinnatiZoo): pic.twitter.com/Dxa7GSvMvz
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) June 11, 2014
jpavko
I do like Puig with all his quirks and talent. I just wish the Dodgers had been able to trade him instead of Matt Kemp
Jeff J. Snider
You make it sound like they tried unsuccessfully to trade Puig and fell back on Plan B of trading Kemp. The Dodgers definitely could have found a trade partner for Puig and brought back significantly more than they got for Kemp. That’s because Puig is better and younger and healthier. Which is why the Dodgers didn’t even try to trade him. Trading Kemp might have been Plan B, but only if Ethier and/or Crawford were Plan A.
Dustin John Hanson
+1. Trading Puig is inconceivable. He is easily the best position player the Dodgers have had the last 2 season and unloading Kemp and his arthritic hips was one of the best moves of the offseason by any team.
leekfink
Puig was never on the trading block. Not because he is better than Kemp (he is not, not now at any rate), but because he’s younger and cheaper. Trading Kemp was a stupid move by a new and short-sighted management group trying to make an impression on a team that has won back-to-back divisions by giving up the best position player we have had since at least Adrian Beltre (if not Mike Piazza). A Kemp-Pederson-Puig outfield with Van Slyke and Crawford or Ethier (and, if a good deal could be found, dealing the other) would have been the best move.
Jeff J. Snider
Puig was a slightly better hitter and a significantly better defender last year. Even if you think a 30-year-old with bad ankles and shoulders and hips is more likely to improve offensively than a 23-year-old with no health issues, there is still a huge gap to make up between Kemp’s defense and Puig’s.
I love Matt Kemp, and I definitely wish they could have found takers for Crawford and/or Ethier so they could have kept Kemp, but they had five Major League outfielders, two of whom were rightfully off-limits. They had to trade at least one, probably two, of Kemp, Ethier, and Crawford, and Kemp easily had the most return value. To call the move stupid and short-sighted is to lose sight of the realities of how trades work.