Yasiel Puig Valdés ( , ; born December 7, 1990) is a Cuban-born American professional baseball right fielder currently playing for the Estrellas Orientales in the Dominican Professional Baseball League. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, and Cleveland Indians. He has also played in the KBO League for the Kiwoom Heroes, as well as in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. His nickname is "The Wild Horse", given to him by former longtime Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully.
Puig also 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. In 2013, Puig hit .319 in 104 games with 19 home runs, and was selected by Baseball America to their annual "All-Rookie team". 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.
Early life
Puig was born 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.
Cuban career
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 the Cuba national team in the 2011 World Port Tournament, where he tried to defect along with teammate Gerardo Concepción. Concepción was successful; Puig was not. He was then banned from playing the 2011–12 seasons.
Defection from Cuba to Mexico
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, the 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 Los Zetas, a murderous Mexican drug cartel involved in cocaine and smuggling. Yunior Despaigne, a boxer who was formerly on the Cuba national team and had known Puig for years through youth sports academies, said:
"I don't know if you could call it a kidnapping, because we had gone there voluntarily, but we also weren't free to leave. If they didn't receive the money, they were saying that at any moment they might give him a machetazo" — a whack with a machete — "chop off an arm, a finger, whatever, and he would never play baseball again, not for anyone."
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. Puig had also been offered to Los Angeles-based agent Gus Dominguez, starting at $175,000, and New York-based agent Joe Kehoskie, starting at $250,000. "Nobody's going to Cuba and bringing out a guy like Yasiel Puig," Kehoskie said, "and just handing him over to an agent out of the goodness of their heart."