For all the excitement Yasiel Puig brings to the field, there have been several head-scratching moments throughout his career.
“It’s very exciting,” Rich Hill said of Puig’s style of play. “If you want to use the word creative, I like that word.” Hill’s comments were in response to Puig’s baserunning blunder in the bottom of the fourth inning on Sunday that somehow led to the Dodgers scoring their first run of the night and taking a lead on the San Francisco Giants that they never lost.
Corey Seager’s leadoff single broke up Chris Stratton’s no-hitter, and Puig followed with a base hit of his own. Two batters later, Cody Bellinger lifted a fly ball to deep left-center field. Seager tagged to take third base, going head first and arriving safely as Hunter Pence’s throw was cut off.
Brandon Crawford noticed Puig attempting to take second base, and looked to end the inning by throwing over to Joe Panik. A rundown ensued, which Puig kept alive long enough for Seager to rise to his feet and race home.
“I didn’t expect to do that, but that happened. I helped the team score the first run,” Puig explained of the sequence. “I got a little excited and tried to be my own coach (and tag).”
Heading into the season, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pointed to baserunning as one area he wanted to see continued growth and maturation from Puig.
Roberts conceded there was “a lot” of dumb luck involved in the Dodgers scoring on Puig’s near-mistake, and he credited Seager for his awareness. “Corey did a great job on that as far as the timing and the break to home plate,” Roberts said.
“So a lot of that was driven by Corey’s astuteness on the bases. That was Corey being a baseball player, seeing the play in front of him and making a decision.”
Despite the brief lapse in judgement, Roberts remains pleased with Puig as a whole. “There’s a lot of energy and certainly the fans feed off of it. When he’s into it, he’s focused and he’s playing with that fire, that energy, we feed off of it,” Roberts said.
“The at-bats, the defensive plays today, he really impacted the game. Yeah, it is something that no one else really has that presence about him.”
Bellinger echoed a similar sentiment, arguing Puig is capable of hitting as well as anyone in the Dodgers lineup when focused. But the 2017 National League Rookie of the Year also wasn’t about to let his teammate off the hook for his baserunning.
“I said thanks for being an idiot,” Bellinger quipped. “It’s all jokes though with him, it’s pretty cool.”
