Yoán Moncada signed with the Red Sox for a $31.5 million bonus in 2015. Less than three months later, he was still just 19 years old, playing full-season baseball on a historically stacked Class-A Greenville team. The hype and expectations were heavy enough to actually be in the air.
“You can smell him from a distance,” said Red Sox third base coach Carlos Febles, laughing as he remembered Moncada’s love for Creed cologne when he managed him at Class-AA Portland.
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In Greenville, Red Sox outfield and baserunning coordinator Darren Fenster would see how picturesque it was when Moncada barreled a ball, how he could smoothly jet around the bases like few players he had seen in his career, and how he could field 10 straight groundballs in 10 different ways. The last point could be read at a compliment, but represented the gulf between the collection of dazzling, athletic plays he could compile, and the consistent glove angle and footwork needed to complete routine plays at the metronomic level required of major leaguers.
In May of that year, Fenster wished there was more time for Moncada in extended spring training to learn the dynamics of being in an MLB organization, like how arrival times for practice and workout times were enforced with fines. He lamented that Moncada had to adjust to this and a new country without the benefit of time at the Red Sox Dominican academy, instead leaning on bilingual teammate Mauricio Dubón. But he understood the push to see Moncada in action given the investment and excitement for him and man, could he see why it was there.
“I’ve been with the Red Sox 10 years,” Fenster said. “There’s probably been four or five guys who when they hit the ball, you didn’t watch the ball, you watched them run. Because their speed was something that was like, holy shit, this guy runs different than everybody else.”
By July, Fenster said Moncada was the best player on a Greenville team that had Rafael Devers, Andrew Benintendi and Michael Kopech on it. That’s a credit to him, his teammates, his coaching staff, cage work with hitting coach Nelson Paulino, and getting Moncada to embrace that early work might not be on the schedule, but would become part of his routine nonetheless.
For that, the biggest catalyst would be a two-error game in June, and the morning after.
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“I think that was the first day that he actually came out on his own, like, he was excited to do defensive work, because to be honest with you, I think he was embarrassed by the errors that he had made the night before,” Fenster said. “He’s got pride, I think that was probably just the biggest thing was his work ethic got driven a lot by the pride that he took, as a reflection of hey, I’m struggling right now and I’ve got to work harder.”
Now 26 years old, Moncada is propping up the middle of the White Sox order with the second-highest on-base percentage in the American League (.429). Fifteen months after general manager Rick Hahn predicted Moncada’s five-year contract extension would see him combine the patience of his 2018 season with the aggressiveness of his 2019 campaign, Moncada is swinging at fewer balls and at a higher rate of strikes than ever before. In his third year at third base, he’s posting the best fielding percentage of his career (.971). But summing up his defense solely in terms of counting up his mistakes would ignore “the way he closes on the ball…I would like to see somebody better,” third base coach Joe McEwing said.
“You see the patience we’ve already seen and seen him doing some damage on pitches he can handle,” Hahn said. “He’s hitting his pitch. He’s not expanding and continues to blossom as one of the finer players in the game.”
In a campaign that’s been oddly and flukily devoid of power production through two months (just four home runs and isolated power that pales in comparison to other top-five players in the AL), Moncada’s 2021 to date still represents not only a return from a 2020 season ravaged by COVID-19, but an improvement upon his breakout 2019 season. It is also clearly a more meaningful one. Not because Moncada will draw more MVP votes, but because his performance is powering a first-place team that expected regression after the losses of Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert. He’s played through nagging soreness that everyone keeps alluding to, with an awe that he keeps playing both sides of doubleheaders.
The driving force is the same thing it’s always been.
“He’s a very proud individual, and if he doesn’t make a play, you can see it on his face,” McEwing said. “He doesn’t want to let anybody down.”
McEwing speaks frequently to the increasingly rare dynamic the White Sox have with their young core of players that have grown together for years. They’ve had opportunities to fail at the major-league level that would not have been easily afforded to Lucas Giolito in Washington, Dylan Cease on the North Side, Tim Anderson on almost any other team, and certainly not to Moncada in Boston, as he struggled in an eight-game September call-up in 2016 and was traded before he could ever adjust. The common sense of a unique opportunity forges a connection.
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“They don’t want to take a day off, because they want to be out there for each other,” McEwing said.
So when Febles was trying to get to know Moncada and helm a developmental project that would culminate with him in the major leagues by the end of the 2016 season, fittingly the connection he made was family. He would ask about Moncada’s young child and his relatives back in Cuba, and the conversation would eventually, naturally, bleed into baseball. Febles had seen some top-dollar prospects who stood apart from the rest of the roster, but save for occasionally buying his Arizona Fall League teammates dinner, Moncada wanted to be part of the group, he connected to the idea of being responsible to his teammates.
Having faced precious few skilled left-handed pitchers before entering professional baseball, Febles watched Moncada’s elite batting eye repeatedly felled by changeups. There were foibles in his defense that in retrospect portended his move to third base. His first-step quickness was so tremendous that he could recover on almost every play, and which stalled his understanding of how vital his pre-pitch setup was. Fenster always got Moncada’s best work when he challenged him to complete sets of 10 plays in a row, foreshadowing how a position that demanded his constant vigilance would be the best fit. A lot of these issues, especially the changeup vulnerability, would wind up playing out at the major-league level, but his work with Febles already established that working through it would be a matter of a time.
“He’ll make the highlight-reel plays, but all his errors came on just routine plays — I would say not being ready, or I would say overconfident,” Febles said. “But when you see a guy like that, and something that people don’t know is he works hard. He goes out and he would do everything you asked him to do. That makes you feel that he’s definitely going to get it. A lot of guys are talented, but they don’t push themselves to the limit. And he does.”
Five years later, Moncada will still field the ball 10 different ways, especially if you’re counting the different arm angles he employs. And he still runs into the most trouble on routine groundballs. But it’s like any performer: he improvises better now that he understands the rules he’s breaking. A traditional setup where Moncada gets his body behind the ball, fields with two hands, raises up and fires to first, frequently finds him narrowing his leg base and adding Alex Colomé levels of cut and sink on his throws to first base. More than ever, Moncada knows it, and prepares to keep himself in rhythm in a way that’s not really replicable to others.
“It’s tough for him to be a traditional fielder, fundamentally sound, and he gets in trouble times when he does,” McEwing said. “I’ve only seen one other player set his glove to a hop. He knows where the hop is going to be and sets his glove there. And the other one was Rey Ordóñez.”
By weighted runs created plus (wRC+; an overall offensive metric that encompasses every contribution at the plate, where 100 is league average), Moncada is already the seventh-best hitter in the American League (151 wRC+). He’s also the seventh least likely to chase pitches out of the zone (23.1 percent). Of the 11 qualified AL hitters batting over .300, he’s drawing more walks (16.8 percent) than all of them. Yet it’s probably easier to talk about Moncada’s defense with a sense of accomplishment, and it’s not because there’s impatience with his proven 25-home run power showing up. Everyone feels his approach can still step forward, or that with his bat speed and approach, his 27 percent strikeout rate can go down.
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“I’m not surprised by the way Moncada has been taking at-bats or by his at-bats,” José Abreu said through team interpreter Billy Russo. “I know that it is the kind of thing he can do. I still think he can do better and more. That’s why for me, what he’s doing right now is just normal.”
“(We’re) getting Yo to be OK, what is your plan and where are you looking and if it’s there let it fly,” said hitting coach Frank Menechino, referencing a transition he saw Christian Yelich undergo when he was the Marlins hitting coach. “Don’t try to be too perfect. I hate when he takes strike three on a fastball. And then I look at it and it’s very borderline and I’m like OK, it was a borderline pitch, but with two strikes we got to protect the plate. So by him being aggressive in the zone is going to help him. And it’s going to help him drive the ball better.”
But beyond McEwing cajoling Moncada to improve at going to his left, Menechino enforcing that there’s rarely ever a good reason to take a called strike three on a fastball, and Moncada’s own high standards, what drives him to get better can be unknown. He does not openly pine for recognition, certainly never acknowledged a stray 2019 10th-place MVP vote, and does not get identified as a vocal leader. Anderson’s enthusiasm for big moments can be seen from space. Abreu’s desire to win is so intense that it has to be managed in his plate approach, or in the training room.
Moncada is so stoic and even-keeled, and his natural talent is so obvious, that he can produce even if it meant nothing to him more than showing up to work. But there’s a tell to look for.
“When he smiles,” McEwing said. “When he makes a play to help the team, you see it in his smile. Right away.”
Moncada’s taste in cologne has probably been upgraded since Febles could smell him from around the corners of the clubhouse in Portland. Fenster said that while the singing was a surprise, the outfits from Moncada’s “Desastre Personal” music video aligned pretty well with his memories of what he wore to the ballpark in Greenville. In a perfect example of how Moncada’s flash and grit coexist, earlier in this season, one of his necklaces was briefly caught in the netting when he barreled toward the stands in pursuit of a fly ball. He grinned throughout the ordeal.
It will always be difficult for some to see past the money Moncada got so early in his career, or the natural talent that makes it seem like success has come easy to him. But that’s only because the response to any struggle is swift.
“A lot of guys when they struggle they kind of go in the opposite direction and kind of in that ‘woe is me’ mode,” Fenster said. “He was the opposite sense, in that when he struggled, it lit a fire under his ass, to be perfectly honest with you.”
(Photo: Ron Vesely / Getty Images)