Yasiel Puig was sent down to Oklahoma City last week. He hasn’t played there much yet. Only two games. Still, he has already bonded with his teammates in ways he never seemed to bond with them up in Los Angeles. Maybe too well for the Dodgers’ tastes.
After a game in Des Moines, Puig and his teammates partied a bit, with Puig recording the festivities on Snapchat. It’s a lot of yelling and boisterousness and some chanting of profanity. Probably nothing terribly unusual for minor leaguers letting off steam on the road, even if it’s not something the public sees every day. You can watch a stream of the snapchats here, but warning, there is some NSFW language.
The Dodgers were asked about this when it started to go viral. They’ve issued a statement:
Andrew Friedman statement on Yasiel Puig's Snapchat activity: pic.twitter.com/DoSHOhFfhR
— J.P. Hoornstra (@jphoornstra) August 9, 2016
I presume this will fall out along the usual battle lines. Some people will say Puig “doesn’t get it” and is some sort of head case/distraction. Others will say that it’s nothing unusual for young ballplayers and that to the extent there is an ado, it’s much ado about nothing.
I’m a pretty big Puig defender, obviously. My view here is that the behavior is not a problem in and of itself -- Hey! His teammates seem to like him for once! -- but that you can’t really be posting all of a team’s private stuff publicly like that so maybe a social media best practices talking-to is in order. Or is that too reasonable for a Puig-related story?
