Hard Hittin’ Mark Whiten Player of the Week

Yasiel+Puig

There could be no other player to win the HHMWPOTW Award for the past week. In baseball, there was the Cuban and then there was everyone else somewhere misplaced lower on the totem pole.

We’ll piggyback off MLB.com for this one, as Puig also took home National League Player of the Week honors (like our award really counts or something):

In his first week in the Major Leagues, Puig led baseball with 27 total bases and was tied for the Major League lead with four home runs. His .964 slugging percentage was second-best in the Majors and was the top mark among National Leaguers. The 22-year-old native of Cienfuegos, Cuba also ranked among league leaders with a .464 (13-for-28) batting average (2nd), 10 RBI (3rd), 13 hits (3rd), and a .483 onbase percentage (7th). Puig had multi-hit efforts in five of his seven games during the week.

I honestly didn’t even need to look at the numbers; and I didn’t until I wrote this article. Puig’s winning of this dubious award was based on one thing. I watch a lot of baseball during the course of a week. Enough to make my wife hate baseball season (we’ve covered this before). Every time I allowed Puig on my television for longer than a half hour last week – it turned out to be almost nightly – he made me say ‘holy shit’. Either by hitting an opposite field grand slam, or throwing a guy out at the warning track, or hitting a missile somewhere all over the field.

Yasiel Puig’s prospect ranking entering this season is proof that a lot of scouts out there have their heads up their ass. This guy is way better than any of those geniuses warned anyone about. And sure, the league will adjust. It always does. But Yasiel Puig is here to stay, and he’s already the one focal player in the entire Dodgers lineup. It should be that way for a solid decade at the least.

Last week he made a cavernous ballpark play small out in Southern California. The people of Los Angeles are living a charmed life right now.

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