The Summer of Puig May be Upon all of us

I told a good friend just yesterday that it seems like every single night, Yasiel Puig has a ‘holy shit’ moment he provides all of us observers with.

Most of the time when you talk about ‘must see TV’ and baseball you’re talking about a pitcher that has lights-out stuff or one of the top four or five talents around the game if it’s an offensive player. Puig is entering that territory, and by summer it could be pretty trivial to even conceive the simple thought.

He’s currently in the middle of a 12-game hitting streak, the longest of his big league career. During that streak he’s hit .404 with an OPS of 1.194. He’s hit four home runs and driven in 15 during that streak.

Here are a few of those moments you might have sadly missed, the first being his home run from Sunday; brandished with a pink Mother’s Day bat. This is the one he invariably ‘hit the piss out of’:

Tim Hudson has a different opinion of Yasiel Puig’s bat flip: “He hit the piss out of it, so I probably would’ve flipped it too.”

— Andrew Baggarly (@CSNBaggs) May 12, 2014

This one was from last night. This one Vin Scully said was ‘Magic’. I was watching it live, and it gave the slumping Dodgers a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. The crowd exploded as it landed in those yellow bleachers in left-center. It’s what I would qualify as a monster bomb, just listen to the scene out there when he connects:

And tonight, Yasiel Puig has his first bobblehead night. Here it is in all of it’s glory, with the City of Angels resting so peacefully behind it:

This is really only the beginning. Some guys you watch each night and you see that there’s a perceived ceiling. You know no matter how hot they get during points and what great qualities they possess, they are who they are and at some point they’ll resort back to being that same player. We’ve had almost a year of Yasiel Puig now, and I’m not sure it’s possible to put a ceiling on him. No one really knows at this point. It’s ‘undefined’, still playing itself out with each exciting act.

With all the horrid injuries and Tommy John surgeries so far this off season and first month-plus, it’s easy to find a reason to get down about the game. This is one of those things we’re being gifted with as fans each night, and it’s important to recognize the star while it’s burning.