Yoan Moncada Reportedly Can't Stop Eating Twinkies
By Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Now that Yoan Moncada is with the Chicago White Sox and Andrew Benintendi is slated to be the Red Sox' starting left fielder for the foreseeable future, one of the team's enduring questions for the next several years is simple: Did Dave Dombrowski trade away the right prospect?
Moncada is spotlighted in a sprawling new feature story for ESPN The Magazine, which tracks his rise from top Cuban prospect to the highest-paid 19-year-old in baseball history to his beginnings as a major league ballplayer in the United States. It paints a nuanced picture of a kid who boasts loads of talent and a limitless ceiling as a player, but remains an uncertainty as to whether he will actually live up to it.
The story describes Moncada as a precocious but impulsive 21-year-old who is still adjusting to the culture shock of moving from Cuba to the U.S. Exemplary of Moncada's apparent struggle to adjust is his bizarre affinity for Twinkies.
Yes, Twinkies.
This is a sentence that was written in real life:
"[Moncada] is a versatile defender with natural speed and a sculpted upper body, and yet his agent says Moncada has sometimes mowed through 85 Twinkies in a week."
That's a staggering 12 Twinkies per day. The article adds that he sometimes plowed through as many as 10 Twinkies in one sitting, "even as the Red Sox were trying to counsel him on diet and nutrition."
No, Dombrowski didn't trade Moncada away because of an apparent Twinkie addiction. And as a professional athlete, he can probably easily work those calories off. But it's one small pixel of a bigger picture that reveals a player who, at the very least, is likely going to need extended time to fully adjust to living in the U.S. and reach his full potential playing in the major leagues.
Moncada is also prone to the usual late sleep-ins and exorbitant spending sprees that you may expect from a 21-year-old. In one amusing anecdote, he believed he was straight-up robbed of money on his first paycheck ... because he didn't realize that taxes were a thing. (Some may still believe he's onto something with that one.)
It also doesn't help that Moncada looked like Pedro Cerrano from the movie Major League trying to hit breaking balls in his major-league call-up in 2016, striking out 12 times in 19 at-bats and plainly showing that he has a long way to go at the major league level.
Benintendi, who grew up in Ohio, certainly has a more firm grasp on American culture than Moncada right now. He's also a year older and a more polished player to this point, despite Moncada's massive upside. Perhaps the Red Sox felt they didn't want to be the team to teach Moncada the ways of life as a professional athlete in addition to coaching him up on the field. Perhaps Moncada is going to take years longer than Benintendi to fully develop as a player and a pro. Moncada's apparent love for Twinkies is just one small, albeit outrageous, sign of that.
Matt Dolloff is a writer for CBSBostonSports.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of CBS or 98.5 The Sports Hub. Have a news tip or comment for Matt? Follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff and email him at mdolloff@985thesportshub.com.
