If You Believe in Omens, Moncada’s Future is Bright

In his first plate appearance with the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night, Yoan Moncada got a standing ovation from the home crowd at Guaranteed Rate Field. He rewarded them by turning an 0-2 count into a nine-pitch base on balls.

In today’s metric-driven baseball, that counts as a perfect debut. In fact, it got Moncada a second ovation while trotting to first base.

In one of the most anticipated call-ups of the season, the switch-hitting Moncada — the No. 1 prospect overall, according to MLBPipeline.com — helped sell nearly 5,000 walk-up tickets for the game and added an intriguing subplot to “Game of Thrones” night at the ballpark.

While he did not get a hit, he looked comfortable at the plate, wearing No. 10 and batting sixth in the order, swinging from the left side against two different right-handers. He worked the count in his first two plate appearances and smoked a line drive out to center field in his third. Moncada also easily handled his chances in the field, smoothly turning a double play at second base.

Without a doubt, the 22-year-old infielder was the main attraction in a 9-1 drubbing at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the sixth straight loss for the rebuilding White Sox, who sport the American League’s worst record at 38-54. Moncada even boosted the CSN Chicago TV ratings to a 2.2 Chicago market average, the highest-rated broadcast of the year and way above the 0.9 season average.

Whether Moncada — originally signed by the Boston Red Sox as an amateur free agent for a record $31.5 million in 2015 before being traded to Chicago in a four-player deal for left-handed starter Chris Sale last December — becomes the ChiSox’s savior remains to be seem. The club signed another Cuban, highly touted outfielder Luis Robert, for $26 million earlier this season and has stockpiled talent in recent weeks. General manager Rick Hahn now has 10 players in MLBPipeline.com’s top 68 under contract.

Believing in omens

However, if you believe in omens, here are several:

• Moncada, born on May 27, 1995, shares the same birthday as Frank Thomas, the slugging first baseman and designated hitter who played his first 16 seasons with the White Sox before ending up in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
• Moncada’s White Sox debut occurred 53 years to the date after the first Major League Baseball outing of Cuban legend Luis Tiant, who won 229 games in 19 seasons.
• Because of his size, stature and tremendous bat speed, Moncada has been called a bigger and faster version of his favorite player, Robinson Canó, an eight-time All-Star who was voted MVP of the most recent Midsummer Classic after winning the game for the AL with the first extra-inning home run in 50 years.

Admittedly, the White Sox have coveted Cuban Stars since acquiring Saturnino Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso early in the 1951 season as part of a three-team trade. Moncada is the 19th Cuban to wear ChiSox colors, joining first baseman José Abreu — a childhood friend from the province of Cienfuegos — on the current roster. To ensure that Moncada gets good advice and support, manager Rick Rentería placed his locker between Abreu and another veteran Latino, the Dominican outfielder Melky Cabrera.

Moncada’s ChiSox debut also thrust the evening into the trivia books: The first MLB game to feature as starters three Cuban defectors who played together on the same team (Cienfuegos): Abreu, Moncada and the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig.

When the contest got called by rain in the top of the eighth inning, it reminded me of a visit with Moncada during a lengthy pregame rain delay in May, when the Triple-A Charlotte Knights visited Indianapolis. Back then, Moncada didn’t have much to say about the growing hype surrounding his big-league future.

“Yes, my overall game is improving, but I still have much work to do to polish my skills,” he said in Spanish. “Yes, I think that I am ready for the challenge of the big leagues.”

I couldn’t help but recall a similar scene and nearly identical one-sided chat in Rotterdam during the July 2013 World Port Tournament in the Netherlands, when Moncada, barely 18, was already drawing dozens of scouts to witness his debut as a backup infielder with a Cuban national team that back then included Abreu, outfielder Yasmany Tomás (Arizona Diamondbacks) and closer Raisel Iglesias (Cincinnati Reds).

So much would change for Moncada in the two-plus years that separated our conversation in Rotterdam and the more recent encounter in Indianapolis.

Not a typical Cuban defector

Another high-profile refugee from Cuba’s rapidly collapsing baseball system, Moncada’s story does not fit the same mold as those of his numerous “defector” countrymen.

Moncada did not actually “defect” in the normal sense, but merely “retired” from his Cienfuegos team in late 2013 in order to test a newly relaxed Cuban emigration system and wrangle legal permission to leave his homeland.

While he got his release from Cienfuegos several months later, Moncada’s tale involved some mystery, starting with a marriage to — and subsequent separation from — an older American woman with whom he had a child, named Robinson after Canó.

It included a brief residence in Ecuador and then a second emigration to Guatemala, and the unlikely assistance of a Cuban-born former flight attendant from St. Petersburg, Fla., and her CPA husband, a couple who would eventually become his agents.

There have been other red flags of the type regularly attached to young Cuban prospects when they first live in the United States. Like Puig, Moncada loves expensive, flashy, high-octane cars. Before playing his first professional game, he started building his fleet with a $500,000 investment in a BMW i8, a Lamborghini Huracán and a BMW X6.

Like Liván Hernández, who helped pitch the Marlins to the World Series championship in 1997, he loves to eat, especially sweets. Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan reported in a feature published last December that over the course of one week, Moncada devoured 225 Twinkies.

But these indiscretions of youth pale when compared to his countrymen who left Cuba in dangerous speedboat escapes orchestrated by Mexican drug peddlers and became hostages of human traffickers. Moncada hasn’t been sued by those left behind in his homeland, as is the case of Tomás, Aroldis Chapman and Yoenis Céspedes. Nor has he had off-field brushes with the law, à la Chapman.

Lean and mean

Throughout, Moncada has remained a soft-spoken and reserved young man who lets his potent bat and fancy glove work do most of the talking. He has focused on keeping his 6-foot-2, 205-pound sculptured body lean and mean while improving on the field, playing third base to expand his game.

Carefully nurtured in the Boston and Chicago minor leagues, Moncada was Baseball America’s 2016 Minor League Player of the Year and the 2016 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game MVP.

He stumbled when the Red Sox called him up last September, going 4-for-19 with one RBI and 12 strikeouts in eight games.

This season, despite 102 strikeouts in 309 at-bats, Moncada hit .282/.377/.447 with 12 home runs, 57 runs scored, 49 walks and 36 RBI in 80 games at Charlotte. The key metric was his .379 BABIP, or batting average on balls in play.

Moncada is definitely a five-tool player with an outstanding arm and more power from the left side of the plate. While athletic, he avoids flashy plays and wild errors. If anything, he’ll remind you of Yulieski Gurriel, Cuba’s star second baseman until defecting in early 2016. Gurriel, 33, is in his second season as the Houston Astros’ first baseman, hitting .292 with 11 home runs and 47 RBI as of July 19.

Because Moncada spent half the season in the minors, some say that the White Sox were guilty of excessive seasoning. It doesn’t matter anymore. Hahn said that Moncada will stay for the rest of the summer.

“We aren’t bringing him here to sit,” Hahn said while admitting, “He’s not a finished product.”

“I love his makeup. He’s driven,” Rentería said. “There are people who see him and he’s a very gifted athlete, so sometimes he does things very easily that may be misconstrued as being nonchalant. But he can get to balls, he can do things seemingly without any effort.”

Major leaguers rarely moonlight as Uber drivers, but the Latino brotherhood remains a strong bond. When Abreu, who is eight years senior, got a text requesting a ride before the game, he agreed to pick Moncada up at O’Hare International Airport and drive him to the ballpark, in true big brother fashion.

“He’s got all the tools to be an All-Star,” a proud Abreu said.

Exactly what the White Sox want to hear.

Featured Image: David Banks / Getty Images Sport