Yoenis Cespedes is back on the Mets.
David Wright may be the all-time great position player of this franchise, but nobody is more the face of the franchise currently (sans the 5-headed pitcher) than La Potencia, Yoenis Cespedes.
Mets fans can now sit back, reminisce AND dream of the future, for the Mets, God willing, have this power for at least the next 4 years.
Before we look over this most recent year in his Mets career, let’s look back on how he got there…
Yoenis Cespedes Milanés was born on October 18, 1985, in Campechuela, Granma, Cuba. He left home at his mother’s behest for a state-run school at age 10, so baseball could be his focus.
He played 8 seasons in the Cuban National Series, all for the Alazanes de Granma, representing the city of Bayamo. He apparently hit .319 with 169 HR and 557 RBI, getting on base at a .404 clip and slugging .585. He played in the World Baseball Classic for Cuba in 2009. Then, he left…
Though he was one of the country’s premier athletes…he never had his own car there — only a bike. When Cespedes defected in 2011, Cubans were still not permitted to own property.
During that defection, as detailed in an incredible and must-read feature by Susan Slusser and Demian Bulwa of the San Francisco Chronicle, he watched from a separate car as his mother and several family members were arrested for attempting to escape. Cespedes successfully reached the Dominican Republic, then played his first Major League season while his mother and much of his family endeavored a fraught, year-long journey to join him in the United States, a harrowing trip that included three days stranded on an uninhabited Caribbean island where they resorted to killing and eating iguanas and seagulls.
Again: Read the whole piece from the Chronicle. It portrays parts of Cèspedes’ experience that those of us not born into a repressive Marxist-Leninist dictatorship can hardly hope to comprehend.
–Ted Berg, For the Win, USA Today
So, Cespedes signed with the Oakland Athletics in 2012 for 4 years and 36 million dollars after the Marlins offered 6 years, but weren’t willing to go 9 mil a season.
In 2013, an omen of sorts occurred when Yoenis won the Home Run Derby in the greatest All-Star jersey of all time as Mets fans got a preview of sights to come. No harm in looking back on that.
Shockingly, the A’s traded Cespedes to the Red Sox at the deadline in 2014 for Jon Lester, a trade that ended up completely killing their momentum for the year – they ended up falling back from the division lead to win a wild card but lose to the Royals in the one game playoff.
“Don’t they want to win a championship?” Yo asked the next year visiting with Detroit, who had traded for the slugger in the offseason.
Unable to compete in 2015, Detroit made Cespedes available at the deadline, and fate had a way shining down on the Mets. They gave the Tigers two pieces to build on in Michael Fulmer and Luis Cessa, and Yo made his Mets debut on August 1, 2015.
The rest is history…
The Mets were able to sign him to what was basically a 1-year deal last offseason, and the Yo Show took off.
How good was it, you ask?
How’d He Do in 2016?
One can’t forget how he began the year, riding into Port St. Lucie in a sick line of cars and horseback to top it off, as well as buying a festival prize pig.
Come April, some Mets fans started booing him in that first week when he started off slow, but he finally busted the slump with a home run the first Sunday the race stripes were worn for 1986’s 30th anniversary.
The booing even made Yo jump into the stands, which had everyone on the edge of their seat at the time hoping to God he was alright.
Though he bruised his knees and one elbow (and probably got an chronic quad problem for the year) he would be everything and more the Mets and their fans had hoped for in 2016.
Cèspedes hit .280 with 31HR and 86RBI in 132 games, with a .354 OBP and a slugging percentage of .530. He got on base at his best clip since his rookie season with the A’s in 2012, when he was on base at a .356 clip.
You could tell he was a better hitter, not swinging at those same low and inside slider he was prone to do in 2015. He was focused, getting the big blast when necessary but going with the pitch and taking the ball the other way when that’s all that was needed.
More Cespedes 2016 season
He had the flare for the dramatic, like when he came off the bench, injured, to belt a game-tying home run against the Reds on the 1st pitch.
And he topped a historic inning with a grand slam against the Giants (and on the 1st pitch AGAIN no less), after getting a 2-run single earlier in the frame.
He consistently would either tie or give the Mets the lead with his shots outta this universe, and sometimes would just show off and tack on for good measure, as he did coming back from his quad injury later in the year, once more against the hated former New York team.
He also got the major hit in the Sunday night square-off against the Wild Card battling teams that series, a weekend that turned out to be the beginning of the Mets push to the 1st Wild Card finish.
And who can forget the Yo’s walkoff against the Marlins at the end of August?
Wow. This post turned into a serious Yo Love Fest. And why not? He’s one of the greatest players to ever wear a Mets uniform. That should be reveled in.
Wait a second…I haven’t even mention his arm yet!
It’s only natural for those in competition to want to challenge the best. They just lose most of the time. Keep running. I’ll keep posting these videos.
It was fun watching him all year. A blast seeing him hit it off so well with Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera, who seemed to form the fun bunch of the team.
While it does seem that this team overall gets along extremely well in that clubhouse, it was fun seeing the three of them form a bond but also be somewhat of a checks and balances on the wacky antics he can sometimes display.
Oh, and of course…
Areas to Improve Upon
Sure. He could feasibly GET BETTER at his hitting, his fielding, his baserunning.
He’s a five-tool player however, and all the Mets need him to do is keep being Yo for more games than he did last year. Injury is always a concern, but in this particular instance, all you can say he needs to improve on is being on the field for more than 150 games (last year being 132.)
He has consistently done that in the past sans his first season with Oakland, so I feel last season was a fluke. Plus, look what he did on a bum quad! Daaaaaaamn.
Role in 2017
This. There will be more of this.
Contract status and Trade Rumors
I am thrilled to say these last two sections are the shortest in the entire post. The Mets, their fans and Cespedes don’t have to worry about a another potential location for the slugger till after 2020.
And don’t even let the horror enter your brain: Ces has a full no-trade clause in his 4-year, $110 million deal. Let’s be honest…the fans alone have a Full-No-Yo-Trade-Clause as well.
Say hello to the next four years. Buckle up, Buckaroos.
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