Mets Season in Review: Yoenis Cespedes

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 of 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?