CHICAGO — Beneath the swagger, quirks and bat flips, Yasiel Puig is not the same player he was just a year ago.
After arriving in Los Angeles four seasons ago amidst carnivalesque excitement, the outfielder struggled to consistently deliver on the promise that seemed so tangibly displayed on his cartoonishly muscular body. By August 2016, he was banished to Triple-A Oklahoma City and catching flak for partying with his minor-league teammates. The show looked over.
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Puig is an easy guy to misunderstand or misinterpret. But while he might seem overly cocky and focused on playing to the camera — with bat licks and bat flips, even on foul balls — his presence and production in the 2017 postseason is the product of a personal maturation that probably saved his career from flaming out.
Now, Yasiel Puig is, again, the show — and he’s been a big reason why the Dodgers are headed to the World Series for the first time since 1988.
“This season I played the best I can,” Puig told reporters after hitting a double and a homer in Game 1 of the NLCS. “They helped me a lot, my manager, and that's the reason why I played better this year and giving one more chance and opportunity to play in the playoffs.”
That one more chance Puig refers to came courtesy of manager Dave Roberts. The outfielder was rumored to be trade fodder not long ago, until Roberts asked for one more chance with him. That gamble is paying dividends so far, but the process isn’t done.
During batting practice prior to Game 4 of the NLCS at Wrigley Field, Roberts made it a point to seek out Puig and spend a few minutes with him after a round in the cage. Roberts wanted to remind Puig to control his breathing while he is at the plate, to remind him to keep his emotions from getting in his way.
“It’s been a process for him, and the results are showing,” Roberts told Sporting News. “He’s had a complete year and played really well on both ends of it — on defense and his at-bat quality all throughout the season. Right now he’s playing at such a high level.”
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Puig, who struggled when he returned to the Dodgers in September 2016 and then in the playoffs, failing to get a hit in the division series against the Nationals and mustering only four singles against the Cubs in the NLCS, has hit over .400 this fall and almost half of his hits have been for extra bases.
Through the regular season and two rounds of the playoffs, the show has returned.
“He’s as focused as I’ve ever seen him,” Roberts said. “We talk about his energy, but we talk about his focus as well. … He’s done a great job in the postseason.”
What’s the difference, then, for Puig? Don’t abandon his energy, but don’t sacrifice his focus.
“I think that he’s really bought into how important every pitch is, and that’s something that as this season has progressed, he’s really understood that importance,” Roberts said. “You can’t just flip a switch, and now it’s the postseason and now it’s important.”
Puig played the most games of his career in 2017 and produced an OPS of .833, his best since making the All-Star team in 2014. In the playoffs, he has been better by far than any other year he has played in October. Puig has, so far, driven in six runs and drawn six walks, more than in all his previous postseason appearances combined. And his teammates are taking notice.
“It’s kind of been all over the map from where he started to where he is now,” Clayton Kershaw said. “But … really this whole season, I think people have gotten through to him a little bit. I think he’s built up trust with some people.”
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Roberts is the largest piece of this trust-building, but the impact runs deep. Kershaw said it’s a factor in Puig’s on-field output.
“You see it in the way he plays ... that he believes people have his best interest at heart,” Kershaw said. “At the same time, too, his level of focus this postseason has been the best that I’ve ever seen it, and his determination — when you combine that with the talent level that he has, it’s a really special player.”
And Kershaw knows that Puig is a lot more than what shows up in the box score. When Puig does things such as develop imitations of his starting pitchers’ windups and break them out unannounced while warming up during batting practice, Kershaw and others notice and laugh. It’s good fun, and his teammates clearly enjoy it.
“His energy and emotion, we definitely feed off that, which is a good leadership trait. I think it’s not so much outward leadership skills right now, but I think just this energy and emotion, it’s a big thing for us,” he said. “Sometimes it’s funny and his antics are different and whatnot, but ... we definitely feed off that at times, which is fun.”