"Puig Mania"

Several days ago I sat down to watch Sunday night baseball for the first time in a long time just to catch a glimpse of Young Cuban phenom Yasiel Puig who has been tearing it up for the LA Dodgers as of late. I've heard tremendous things about this guy reading all of the baseball scouts raving about his tools as a ballplayer.

As he stepped into the box against San Francisco Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner I watched every little detail of this guy as a hitter. He worked the count to 1-1 and he had displayed solid plate discipline laying off a borderline second pitch. Watching what occurred on the 3^rd pitch was beautiful and impressive to watch a young player do. On a pitch low and away he churned those hips and swung at the ball. He stayed inside of it and hit it to the opposite field over the right field fence at Dodger Stadium for the7^th home run of his very short career. Many young players you see in the Majors have a problem with any pitches low and away and he just made it look eazy on that opposite field home run, he looked like the 2^nd coming of Yoenis Cespedes with that swing.

Although Puig is off to a hot start keep in mind that 20 games is still a very small sample size and that the MLB will make adjustments to him the question is how will he adjust back once the necessary adjustments are made, that’s when we find out how good he is. Looking at Puig statistically one thing bothers me which is his walk to strike out ratio which is 3 to 17. That shows me that he still has much room to grow in terms of plate discipline as do pretty much all hitters his age do.

With all of that said if he stays hitting at a high level and continues to increase his numbers I think he deserves some consideration for the All-Star game. You look at his current stats of 34 Hits, 14 runs scored, 7 homeruns, 14 RBI's while hitting 442. in 20 games that is just for lack of a better word “NASTY”. He is hitting on a torid pace and making a huge impact for the LA Dodgers. To put his numbers into perspective check out how he stacks up with Bryce Harper and Mike Trout in their 1^st 20 games of their rookie seasons in the tweet below.

Yasiel Puig has more HR (7 vs 5) & RBI (14 vs 13) in his 1st 20 games than Mike Trout & Bryce Harper in their 1st 20 career games combined.
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) June 25, 2013

Puig is making history right now and is just plain entertaining to watch. He will eventually struggle as do all players do in baseball at some point but for now just enjoy “Puig Mania”.