FanGraphs Audio: An Informal Conversation w/ Yoan Moncada
Episode 535
Promising Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada signed with Boston on Monday for $31.5 million. FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel spoke with him on Tuesday and has provided a series of audio vignettes from that conversation, which are reproduced here. Note: the actual audio with Moncada begins at about the 10:30 mark. It’s preceded by a brief conversation with McDaniel, who provides helpful contextual notes and other observations.
From McDaniel’s conversation:
Grabbed some lunch con mi amigo Yoan Moncada. He laughs when he’s talked about on MLB network. Will post audio soon. pic.twitter.com/D0xSJf0bEQ
— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) February 24, 2015
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 26 min play time.)
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Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kiley is awesome. FanGraphs is awesome.
Holy shit. I have impossibly high hopes for this episodes so I’ll probably post later slightly disapointed, but either way nice get.
Can we change Kiley’s title to lead Moncada analyst?
or to “Every Other Scouts Daddy”
Oh man, this is really great. I wish Moncada himself were more audible and/or that you’d left more of the Spanish in — not just because it’d help to get more of a sense of personality but because of his accent, which is fantastic, super-stereotypical Cuban.
I’m ready to rename this site KileysFansGraphs
McDanGraphs
Great show guys, just a semantic question. Is it accurate to call Moncada a defector? I thought part of his story was that he was coming to the US with the blessing of the Cuban government.
Did he say Frederich Cepeda was the best Cuban player? Or his favorite? It was hard to hear that part.
Yes. I asked the best Cuban player still in the country, he said “for me?” and I said yes and he said Cepeda, then I followed up to make sure we were talking about the same guy by saying the Cepeda that’s in Japan with Yulieski Gourriel and he said yes that one. Or something like that, my Spanish is terrible.
The best part “what’s wrong with you, you’re supposed to be an adult* Kiley giggles.
The addition of Kiley to this site has brought to much legitimacy.
She’s not a very good translator. When Kiley asks him what his approach is at the plate, she never gets to the question in Spanish: she asks what he’s thinking when he’s going to hit, hesitates for a bit how to explain approach or contact hitter or power hitter or if he’s patient or anything, and he just jumps in with “i want to be better than the pitcher” and all that. He doesn’t say anything about himself as a hitter. What she answers about him having a good eye and being a power hitter may be something she has heard beforehand, but it’s not what Moncada says in the interview. And the thing about the NY- Boston rivalry, she never manages to explain that they have a rivalry, and kind of asks in a weird way how he feels about New York. I think he takes to be something about playing for new york, and he just answers he doesn’t know, that he would have played wherever, that he didn’t have a commitment to any team, that he’d played in cienfuegos in Cuba, never really seeming sure about the question. Then she makes up a completely different platitude to answer. Just FYI of course, it’s not her fault she’s not a translator.
The kid’s alright!