Background and career
Yasiel Puig Valdés ( YAH-see-el PWEEG, Catalan pronunciation: [ˈput͡ʃ]; born December 7, 1990) is a Cuban-born American professional baseball right fielder for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Canadian Baseball League. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, and Cleveland Indians, and in the KBO League for the Kiwoom Heroes. He also played in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. His nickname was "the Wild Horse", given to him by longtime Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. Puig played for the Cuba national baseball team in the 2008 World Junior Baseball Championship, winning a bronze medal. He defected from Cuba in 2012 and signed a seven-year, $42 million contract with the Dodgers. He made his MLB debut on June 3, 2013. That season, Puig hit .319 in 104 games with 19 home runs, and was selected by Baseball America to their annual "All-Rookie team". The following season, he started in the All-Star Game. The Dodgers traded Puig to the Reds before the 2019 season, and the Reds traded Puig to the Indians at the 2019 trade deadline. Puig did not sign with a team in 2020, and played for El Águila de Veracruz of the Mexican League in 2021. He signed with the Heroes for the 2022 season. He played for Veracruz again in 2024 and the Heroes in 2025.
Yasiel Puig Valdés was born on December 7, 1990, in Cienfuegos, Cuba, the elder of two children of Omar Puig and Maritza Valdés. He has a sister, Yaima. His father was an engineer in a sugar cane factory. He began playing baseball at the age of nine.
Puig played for the Cuba national baseball team when they won the bronze medal in the 2008 World Junior Baseball Championship. He then played for the Cienfuegos team of the Cuban National Series in the 2008–09 Cuban National Series. He batted .276 with five home runs in his debut season. Puig enjoyed a breakout season in the 2009–10 Cuban National Series, with a .330 batting average, 17 home runs, 47 runs batted in (RBIs), and 78 runs scored in 327 at-bats. Puig also played for Cuba in the 2011 World Port Tournament, where he tried to defect along with teammate Gerardo Concepción. Concepción was successful, but Puig was not and was then banned from playing the 2011–12 seasons.
Starting in 2009, Puig tried to defect to Mexico 13 times in order to become a legal resident so he could become eligible to sign a contract in Major League Baseball. The first time, police pulled over Puig's car. The second time, the boat failed to arrive. The third time, police raided their safe house and detained them for six days. On the fourth try, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Vigilant intercepted their boat near Haiti. The fifth time, he was successfully taken to Mexico by the Los Zetas drug cartel. Yunior Despaigne, a boxer who was formerly on the Cuba national team and had known Puig for years through youth sports academies, said he "[didn't] know if you could call it a kidnapping, because we had gone there voluntarily, but we also weren't free to leave." He added that the cartel threatened to "give him a machetazo" (a whack with a machete) if the payment failed to go through. Floridian Raul Pacheco, the 29-year-old president of Miami-based T&P Metal and PY Recycling, allegedly paid smugglers $250,000 to get Puig out of Cuba. In exchange, Pacheco would receive 20% of Puig's future earnings after he signed an MLB contract. Pacheco had previously been arrested in 2009 for attempted burglary and in 2010 for using a fake Bank of America credit card to buy $150,000 worth of beer and having in his possession four other fraudulent credit cards and a fake ID card. He was sentenced to two years’ probation. According to court records, Puig has paid Pacheco over $1.3 million. He also paid $400,000 to $500,000 to Alberto Fariñas, the 49-year-old vice president of Pacheco's T&P Metal company, and $600,000 to Marcos González, a Miami lawyer. He also paid an undisclosed amount to Gilberto Suarez, founder of a start-up company called Miami Sport Management. A month after Puig left Cuba, the captain of the smuggling boat, Yandrys León, described as "one of the most important capos of the Cuban-American mafia", was found dead in Cancún. Cuban boxer Miguel Angel Corbacho Daudinot was sentenced to seven years in prison after Puig allegedly testified against him to the Cuban authorities. In 2013, Corbacho Daudinot's lawyers filed a federal lawsuit against Puig in Miami, claiming Puig delivered false testimony that led to Corbacho Daudinot's imprisonment under "inhumane" conditions, and in so doing violated the Torture Victim Protection Act; the suit sought $12 million in damages. Puig had been offered to Los Angeles-based agent Gus Dominguez, starting at $175,000, and New York-based agent Joe Kehoskie, starting at $250,000, the latter of whom said that "nobody's going to Cuba [...] and just handing him over to an agent out of the goodness of their heart."
The Los Angeles Dodgers signed Puig on June 28, 2012, to a seven-year contract worth $42 million. Eddie Oropesa and Tim Bravo, a special-education teacher from Las Cruces High School in New Mexico, helped the newly arrived Puig adjust to life in the United States during his first year. The Dodgers placed Puig on the 40-man roster and assigned him to their Arizona Rookie League team. In nine games, he hit .400 with four homers and 11 RBI. On August 13, the Dodgers promoted Puig to the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the Class A-Advanced California League. He played in 14 games with the Quakes and hit .327. After the Quakes season, he was scheduled to join the Mesa Solar Sox of the Arizona Fall League, but a staph infection in his right elbow required surgery and sidelined him for several months. After the infection healed, he opted to play winter ball in Puerto Rico to keep his development on schedule. Puig had a strong spring training with the Dodgers in 2013, hitting .526 in Cactus League games and having some in the press speculate that he might break camp with the Dodgers. However, he was optioned to the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts just before the end of spring training. He hit .313 with eight home runs and 37 RBI for the Lookouts in 40 games.
On June 2, 2013, the Dodgers announced they had recalled Puig from Double-A. He made his MLB debut on June 3. In his first at bat, he singled to left-center off Eric Stults of the San Diego Padres. He went 2-for-4 and showed his strong arm by recording an outfield assist on a double play to end the game. Puig hit two home runs, doubled, and drove in five runs in his second game. He became the first Dodger ever to have a multi-homer game in one of his first two appearances. In his fourth game, on June 6, he hit a grand slam off Cory Gearrin of the Atlanta Braves. Puig was named the National League Player of the Week for the week of June 3–9. Puig had 27 hits in his first 15 games, tied with Joe DiMaggio (1936) and Terry Pendleton (1984) for second-most all-time behind Irv Waldron (1901) and Bo Hart (2003) with 28. Puig also became the first player in major league history to record at least 34 hits and seven home runs in his first 20 games and set Dodger records for most hits through 20 games (one more than Gibby Brack in 1937) and total bases through 20 games (58, four more than Del Bissonette in 1928). Puig finished June with 44 hits, breaking Steve Sax's 1983 team record for most hits by a rookie in one month. That total was also second all-time for rookies in their first month, behind only DiMaggio who had 48. In 26 games in June, Puig hit .436 with a .467 on-base percentage and a .713 slugging percentage. He won both the National League Rookie of the Month Award and the National League Player of the Month Award, the first time someone had won both in their first month in the majors. Despite his not making his debut until June, Puig received 842,915 fan write-in votes for the MLB All-Star Game. His name was included among the All-Star Final Vote candidates. In that vote, Puig finished second to Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman. Puig cooled in September, batting .214 in the final month of the season. In 2013, Puig hit .319 in 104 games with 19 home runs and 42 RBIs. He was selected by Baseball America to their annual "All-Rookie team" and finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting to fellow Cuban José Fernández. Puig hit well in his first postseason, hitting .333 in 10 games. However, he grounded into a double play in the 9th inning of the team's Game 4 loss in the National League Championship Series (NLCS).
