Passan Promotes Puig, Peers

Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan has already demonstrated his own fascination with Yasiel Puig. That notwithstanding, I was cracking up to see Passan's mid-year baseball awards, and what Passan wanted to award to Puig after three months of MLB baseball:

The Yasiel Puig Award For Complete Awesomeness: Yasiel Puig, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers – He can do this and look like a model while someone more than 600 home runs ahead of him takes on the creepy air of a mortician. He can get thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double time after time, and it's cool because he is cool. Puig is going to make the All-Star Game despite fewer plate appearances than Omar Infante in 2010, and it's going to infuriate the baseball establishment that believes an All-Star berth shouldn't be tied to the small sample size that he has thus far aced, and the best part is that he's going to walk into New York and steal the whole damn show, because that's what he does.

Two other Dodgers also get honorable mentions, in the same article:

NL Cy Young of the Half: Matt Harvey, SP, New York Mets – No disrespect intended to Clayton Kershaw (who's got a better ERA than Harvey), Adam Wainwright (who's got a better strikeout-to-walk ratio), Cliff Lee (who's got more victories) and all of them (who have got more innings). Harvey simply has been better. More dominant with a 10.3-strikeouts-per-nine rate that leads the NL. Stingy with home runs, his rate fifth lowest in the NL. He is Justin Verlander: a complete monster. And while Wainwright especially has an argument in his favor, there is no shame going with Harvey. Wouldn't want to make him mad. [...]

NL Rookie of the Half: Shelby Miller, SP, St. Louis Cardinals – Much like last year, when Wade Miley won the award with full knowledge he'd cede the actual one to Bryce Harper, Miller is but a placeholder for Puig. It's too bad, because he has been brilliant at times and headlines a phenomenal class of rookie pitchers in the NL that also include All-Star-by-Marlins-default Jose Fernandez, the Dodgers' Hyun-Jin Ryu and Atlanta's Julio Teheran.