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Although it could’ve been expected that the 108-win Boston Red Sox would run away with the World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers provided their fans with more than a few moments of pleasure along the way. Chief among them was Yasiel Puig’s mammoth blast off Eduardo Rodriguez in the sixth inning of Game 4. Boston would go on to win that contest, but it was at the height of the jubilation that I found myself considering the Minnesota Twins' Miguel Sano.Back in the summer of 2012, Yasiel Puig was all the rage. A Cuban defector, he was looking for a big payday with a major league team. Ned Colletti inked the outfielder on a seven-year, $42 million deal. Puig, 21 years old at the time, had taken roughly a year off to go through the signing process (one which has many hurdles for players from his home country). With a list of suitors a mile long, Yasiel experienced the highs and lows of being an international free agent. In defecting from Cuba, Puig escaped by speedboat in the middle of the night. His handlers made death threats against him, and the journey to freedom through Mexico and eventually the United States was not one for the faint of heart. Even before debuting with the Dodgers on June 3, 2013, he had been put through the wringer. For Miguel Sano, the journey was a much more traditional one. The Dominican Republic is a hotbed of baseball talent and although Buscones still have plenty of shady tactics up their sleeves, the stories regarding death threats and necessary defection are few and far between. Sano’s eventual signing by the Twins came after hiccups regarding his age, and even included bone scans to verify the truth. Arriving in the organization prior to his 17th birthday, he’s had a much stronger support system throughout his professional career. Jumping back to that World Series moment for Puig, and where we are today with both players, the parallels between them are intriguing to say the least. In 2016, as a 25-year-old, Puig was sent packing by the Dodgers. In the three seasons prior, the Los Angeles outfielder owned an .858 OPS and had an All-Star appearance under his belt. A continuous slide in performance had become a yearly occurrence though, and the .740 OPS is where things bottomed out that year. Assigned to Triple-A Oklahoma City, the Dodgers were looking for their outfielder to improve “as a player and person.” Puig was recalled after 19 games at Triple-A, and turned in a .900 OPS for the Dodgers to wrap up the season. Since that point Puig has posted an .827 OPS over the past two seasons and has used his personality to fuel a competitive drive on the field. Less of a distraction off the field, the Dodgers once again have a difference maker on their 25-man roster. It was in 2018 that Miguel Sano experienced some of the same realities with the Minnesota Twins. An immense talent, one that was ranked as the fourth best prospect in baseball by MLB.com, the person came to be questioned. As production slid and weight was added, the level of commitment toward being great had become the focal point of Sano’s narrative. Needing to be a cornerstone for the Twins big league roster, the reality is that the organization simply couldn’t count on the level of production that would be given to them. Sitting at the same age of the demoted Yasiel Puig, 25-year-old Miguel Sano was sent packing. Needing to be watched over, given a support system, and be invested in, Fort Myers and Single-A was the landing spot for the Twins star. He too spent 19 games riding the bus, before a brief four game stint at Triple-A that would vault him back to Minnesota. We aren’t yet at a point to call this story complete, and while Yasiel Puig is two years removed from his adjustment, Miguel will enter 2019 at the age of 26. The next chapter in this saga comes down to Miguel and what he’d like to demand of himself. The Twins have all but played their hand, and Sano investing in himself provides the best path for his moment to still be in front of him. Yasiel Puig posted his best OPS since 2014 when he returned to the Dodgers full time in 2017. He didn’t garner the All-Star or MVP votes that came in his first two seasons, but he re-established himself as a cornerstone piece to a very talented active roster. How Miguel Sano prepares for 2019 will set the expectations that both he and the Minnesota Twins can establish for the year ahead. Currently at his lowest point as a professional, this is where there is great opportunity for the climb. Even if it ends up as a five game World Series loss in 2020 it’d be magical to see Miguel Sano take an opposing pitcher deep, toss his bat, and throw his hands in the air full of jubilation. At this moment that seems far-fetched, but there’s a blueprint and a path to follow. All the talent in the world resides on the side of Miguel Sano. The Minnesota Twins have made the commitment to him as both a ballplayer and a person. In 2019, it will be on the Dominican, and whether he wants stardom for himself or not. Click here to view the article

Miguel Sano is listed by Baseball-Reference at 260 pounds. This LEN3 article has him at 263. If you've ever seen him up close, you know that Miguel Sano's true weight is probably something closer to thirty-seven billion pounds. It's also possible that he has no weight, but rather that the Earth's weight is measured in terms of the effect Sano's gravitational pull has on it. He's a large man, is what I'm saying. He's one scary, seriously oversized muscle with a face. That's an unusual enough thing for a third baseman to be, but it's all but unheard of for an outfielder, which is what the Twins keep insisting Sano is now. Outfielders are tall, but lithe, and quick -- the best ones a bit more slight, the plodders a bit bigger, but near enough to none this big.Not to put too fine a point on it, but seriously, he's really very large -- "just" 6'4", but almost impossibly thick for an outfielder. Click on the link above and scroll down to the photo of Sano reaching for a ball in the outfield, about halfway down. There's definitely a part of you that just says "no, nah, nope, that's not how it works" -- right? That's not an outfielder, playing the well-known baseball game position that is outfield. That's Travis Hafner or David Ortiz or Ryan Howard shagging balls in batting practice to give the guys a quick laugh. Now, none of that is to say he can't play out there. Sano is by all accounts an extremely athletic guy, quicker than he looks. He certainly has a strong arm, and his pro career has included 33 steals in 47 tries and about a triple for every hundred plate appearances. He certainly could be just fine out there. What I'm wondering is: has it ever happened before, with any success? There's no good way to figure that out, really. Weight is essentially the only proxy we have, yet it's a terrible thing to go by, for a long list of reasons. The biggest such reason is probably that players' weights can change dramatically over time, so a player's "listed weight" has very little meaning. Take, for example, four-time All-Star Carlos Lee: Baseball-Reference lists him at 270, which was no doubt accurate toward the end of the line, when Lee was almost exclusively a first baseman for the Astros. This card from his rookie season, though -- when he was roughly the same age Sano is now -- has him at 210. Lee was by no means a small man, and spent much of his career as an outfielder quite a bit above that 210, but he wasn't Sano's size. So acknowledging those limitations, what do we know, or what can we guess at? It turns out there have only ever been 21 seasons of 140 games or more by players who Baseball-Reference lists at 260 pounds or more and who played at least half their games in the outfield; that list is here, sorted by Baseball-Reference's fielding runs. Eleven of those 21 were by Carlos Lee, and we've established why that doesn't really work--though he had some surprisingly good years with the glove, if you feel like looking that way for hope anyway. Another third of those seasons, seven more of them, were by Adam Dunn, and that's not good. That's not good at all. Dunn (who, like Sano, was an athletic minor leaguer, twice stealing more than 20 bases, and even going 19-for-28 once early in his big-league career) is listed as 6'6", 285. He was listed at 240 as a rookie, too, so it's not a pure Carlos Lee ballooning scenario, even though that's still 20 pounds lighter than Sano, at a similar age--and is famously one of the worst outfielders, and one of the worst players at any position, ever to regularly put on a glove. The -43.0 fielding runs he put up in 2009 stands as the worst mark of all time by any player, ever, and his -26.0 in 2007 is the 12th worst among outfielders, and at ages 29 and 27, respectively. If we're looking for reasons for any hope for Sano the corner outfielder, we're going to have to find a better comp than Dunn. The only other 260-plus regular outfielder -- owner of the remaining three of those 21 seasons -- is Dmitri Young, Delmon's much older, much heavier, much better brother. Young is listed at a whopping 295, though he, too, has a pre-rookie card that lists his weight (at age 20) at 210, so it's likely that even Young wasn't quite Sano-sized when he got his start. It also strikes me as a different kind of weight--Young was doubtless an incredible athlete, but carried considerably more fat and less muscle than Sano, on a shorter frame. For what it's worth, Young had a mixed record, but was far from a total disaster in the field (until the very end, when he was pushing 300). Young was also hurt quite a bit. It's not a close comparison, and, I think, also not a desirable one, though it's better than Dunn on that front. We can reduce the weight minimum to 250, and get these 17 more seasons. Seven are by Matt Holliday, and I'm not sure that works--he's listed at 250 even, so 10-15 pounds lighter than Sano, and just seems like a different creature: this is a picture of him headed into his near-MVP 2007, for instance, and he looks like the kind of person Sano could swallow in one bite. At approximately Sano's age, Holliday's baseball card listed him at 235. Another of our new comps is born DH Jack Cust, whom the A's ran out there 83 times as a 29-year-old in 2008. Let us never speak of this again. Seven of the seasons were by the great Frank Howard, who certainly never won any awards for his defense, but could acquit himself well enough (and hit SO well) that he stayed more or less out there for 12 years. At the same time, though, Howard was 6'7", three inches taller than Sano's listed height; an unholy beast, to be sure, but in a different way than Sano is one. Howard was much closer to the stereotypical outfielder build, just...enlarged. Finally, there's Yasiel Puig, who it shocked me to learn is listed at 6'2" and 255. Puig certainly doesn't give off that same old-world-god vibe Sano does, though I've never seen them together, so who's to say? Puig's athleticism is well known, and he's put up a total of 14 fielding runs in his career, even more or less holding his own in center when necessary. If you think Puig compares to Sano, that's an awfully encouraging comparison. It sure seems to me that they're different styles of athlete with vastly different frames, but what do I know? So here's what's interesting and worrisome: I'm not sure the game has ever seen anything quite like the hulking superhuman monster that is Miguel Sano trying to patrol the outfield on a daily basis. There are similarities here and there with Puig, and Howard, and Dunn (gulp), and Young, but none of them quite fit, for one reason or another. Fair or not, Sano's body just screams "1B/DH," and most teams and managers just wouldn't even think (or not much) about sticking him out there. This is kind of uncharted territory. That said, I don't expect a disaster. Learning the position and instincts are more important than any of this, but I think he can do it. I don't know that it's a long-term solution -- he's likely to keep getting more first-baseman-like as he goes, as history has shown -- but for a year or two, it doesn't seem crazy to think it might work out just fine. Regardless though, no one as bulky as Sano, in the way Sano is-- and likely no one already so bulky when they were so young -- has ever attempted to play anything like a full season in the outfield. This is a whole new unknown sort of thing we're dealing with here. That's kind of fun, right? Click here to view the article