LOS ANGELES When Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly says that overnight sensation Yasiel Puig plays with that juice, hes not accusing the 22-year-old, five-tool outfielder of using PEDs.
But in his first two major league games, Puigs cannon arm, jaw-dropping power and infectious personality did seem to inject the Dodgers with something a lot of things, actually, the most obvious being energy, excitement and a much-needed productive bat.
He does some amazing things, and the other guys love seeing that, Mattingly says. Its hard not to watch this guy. He looks like he plays with such joy. Hes got that juice.
Amazing things? In his fourth major league game, he hit a grand slam as the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 5-0 on Thursday. When will it end?
Alas, Puig added a sixth and unwanted tool to his game Wednesday night: mere mortality. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in a 6-2 loss to the San Diego Padres. The Dodgers, crippled by injuries and/or underperformance from supposed stars Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, remained in last place in the NL West with a 26-33 record.
And their new comic book superhero? Puigs batting average is now at .438.
One of the last players to leave the Dodgers clubhouse late Wednesday night, Puig still had a smile on his face and shrugged off the 0-for.
Tomorrow, he said through a Spanish-language interpreter, is another day.
Thats not exactly original when it comes to rallying cries for the disappointing, $200-million-plus-payroll 2013 Dodgers. But what Puig, a Cuban defector whose name is pronounced Ya-see-el Pweeg, brought to the teams effort Monday and Tuesday certainly was new.
In his first two major league games, Puig, who appears a little smaller than he is listed (6-3, 245 pounds) but has the look of an NFL strong safety with a V-shaped torso and six-pack abs, seemed as if he was ready to give Mike Trout and Bryce Harper some competition in the category of best young baseball superstar.
With the slumping Kemp placed on the disabled list along with Carl Crawford, the Dodgers called up Puig from Class AA Chattanooga on Monday. Mattingly put Puig in right field, with Ethier moving over to center, and put him in the leadoff spot.
Puig had a routine game with a couple of unimpressive singles until the ninth inning when The Throw exploded first on the field, then on the Internet. With one out and a runner on first and the Padres trailing 2-1 in the top of the ninth, Puig raced back to the right-field wall to catch a fly ball, then fired a line drive to first baseman Adrian Gonzalez to double up shocked Padres baserunner Chris Denorfia and end the game with a 9-3 double play.
Puig-mania rattled around L.A. all day Tuesday, then bloomed fully in the ballpark Tuesday night, when Puig, a right-handed batter and fielder, hit two completely different and equally amazing home runs, both of them crucial in a 9-7 victory.
The first was a tape-measure shot off a Clayton Richard changeup that landed halfway up the left-field pavilion, a roughly 440-foot blast that was the longest home run in Dodger Stadium this year. The second was a screaming line drive that just cleared the right-field fence off a low-and-away Tyson Ross fastball. The first one was a three-run shot that brought the Dodgers into a 5-5 tie. The second was a two-run shot that gave the Dodgers a 9-6 lead.
He became just the second player in major league history to post a two-homer, five-RBI game within his first two games in the big leagues. The only other player to do that was Dino Restelli with the 1949 Pittsburgh Pirates.
(Burgeoning Puig fan clubs can feel free to skip the next sentence. Dino Restelli was out of the majors two years later, having hit .242 with 13 career home runs.)
Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis doesnt know how many tools Dino Restelli had. And hes not that well-schooled on the amazing-but-brief major league career of super-athlete Bo Jackson, to whom Mattingly compares Puig. But he knows he hasnt seen anyone come up from the minor leagues like Puig.
I dont want to compare him to Mike Trout, because hes got a long way to go before hes done what Mike Trout has done, but you see that same kind of body type and those same kinds of skills, Ellis says.
Even before the home runs, though, the Puig buzz in and around Los Angeles was palpable.
The Dodgers lost a lot of fans during the chaotic, scandalous and ultimately bankrupt era of previous owner Frank McCourt. They didnt lose all their fans, though, and when the new Guggenheim owners began acquiring and writing all those mega million-dollar contracts, one of them was particularly intriguing: a seven-year, $42-million deal last summer for a then-21-year-old Cuban power-hitting outfielder that only two Dodgers employees had ever seen: scouting director Logan White and longtime scout Mike Brito.
White had never even seen Puig play a game, and had seen him take batting practice only three times. Then, boom, $42-million contract.
It took me a while to get my mind around that, White said last year.
The intrigue surrounding Puig turned into enormous expectations when Puig absolutely tore it up this year in spring training, hitting .526 and slugging .842 in 57 at-bats.
But the Dodgers already had three former All-Stars in the outfield in Kemp, Ethier and Crawford. So Puig was sent to Class AA Chattanooga, where he could play every day and where the Dodgers hoped he would continue to hit like crazy while also having some low-pressure time to learn the game more fully, learning when to try to take the extra base and when not to, learning to consistently hit the cutoff man with that howitzer arm of his and, not least, gaining some maturity.
The maturity goal took a hit in late April when he was arrested for driving 97 mph in a 50-mph zone two blocks from the Chattanooga Police Department.
But the hits just kept coming. He was hitting .313 with eight homers and 37 RBI in 40 games in the Southern League when he was called up.
He now says he didnt mind the demotion, though Mattingly said he was clearly angry back then.
Hes been mostly all smiles since arriving in L.A. with his mother, father and younger sister, who all live in a house Puig bought in Miami.
Puig doesnt know anything about Mannywood, a brief-but-exciting time in recent Dodgers history when Manny Ramirez was powering the Dodgers into the playoffs.
Told hes having the same electrifying effect on the normally laid-back L.A. fans, he beamed. I feel very happy the fans are here and are cheering for me, and I am happy the team is winning.
Before Wednesdays game, he is asked what he can do to top Tuesdays two-HR game?
Three (Wednesday night), shouts nearby teammate Hanley Ramirez in English. Anybody can hit two home runs.
Puig laughs.
I cannot predict the future, he says.
Maybe not, but from what the Dodgers have seen so far, he may be able to influence it greatly.
Right now, Mattingly says, Im not going to say theres anything this guy cant do.
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