Circle of leadership
Latin stars have bonded while moving up in system
In the Pirates’ win Monday over the Milwaukee Brewers, Oneil Cruz and Rodolfo Castro powered their team’s offense.
Both homered off of the 2021 National League Cy Young winner. Cruz’s came in the fifth inning, a three-run, line-drive blast to right. Castro’s was in the sixth, a majestic looping bomb into rightcenter field. Both also made their own signs to the dugout.
As Cruz rounded third, he gave a knowing shrug to someone with the Pirates, eyeballing them as if to say, “I told you so.” Castro didn’t even wait that long. Basically as soon as he knew it was gone, he dropped the bat and stared at his teammates to fire them up and homer in style.
They made for exciting celebrations of important moments. As it turns out, the two rookies were mostly looking at right-handed reliever Yerry De Los Santos.
“I was talking to De Los Santos before my at-bat and I said, ‘Man, if I get to hit this guy another time, I’m going to get him. I’m going to hit it out,’” Cruz said. “So right away when I hit the ball out, I was looking for him in the dugout just to signal, ‘I told you so.’”
“Very similar to Cruz,”
Castro said. “I told the boys, watch, if I get another at-bat against this guy, I’m going to crush it. I’m going to hit it out of the park. At the end of the day, those are my guys. We have a lot of fun, we speak a lot of life into one another. It’s part of the game. You speak those things into existence and the first thing you want to see is the people you told.”
Cruz, Castro and De Los Santos are all close. The position players first played together as teammates in the organization in 2017, with the now-defunct low Class-A West Virginia Power. De Los Santos then teamed up with Castro with High-A Greensboro in 2018. All three are bonded by their roots in the Dominican Republic.
That’s a typical way of
bonding for young players moving through the system together.
What separates De Los Santos, at least right now, is that he won’t play a game the rest of the season. A lat strain placed him on the 60-day injured list Aug. 12, without enough time to recover and return in the regular season.
And yet, the Pirates feel strongly about the effect De Los Santos has on his teammates. He’s seen as a calming force for players like Cruz and Castro, someone who knows them well and feels comfortable enough to motivate them if necessary, whatever that may mean.
“We have a young core group of Latin players, and Yerry is a really good influence even though he’s 24 years old,” Shelton said. “I love having him on the bench because he’s got a ton of energy. He treats the game with enthusiasm, which I think is really important, and because of it, these guys feed off each other. … I thought it was important for him to be with his teammates and I thought it was just as important for his teammates to be around him.”
As Shelton alluded to, that level of leadership from a 24year-old isn’t exactly normal. To be fair, picking out leaders in an MLB clubhouse isn’t necessarily easy. Anybody can step up, and even among the Pirates group of Spanishspeaking players, they also have 31-year-old reliever Manny Banuelos who can help guide rookies through a long season.
But De Los Santos has certain personality traits that lead to his teammates’ trust in him. He’s calm, yes, but he knows the things that make Cruz and Castro tick and is willing to be direct with them, whether that means giving them advice, motivation, whatever. The fact that De Los Santos’ teammates and manager then speak kindly of him in return means a great deal to him.
“I just see it as being a good teammate. That’s how I am. I’m very grateful for the manager trusting and providing me the opportunity to be here because I know I’m injured,” De Los Santos said. “... Anything I can do to help our team in any way, even when I’m injured, I’m going to do it. I care about these guys. I’ve been playing with these guys for
the longest time.
“I’m always cheering for them, always motivating them. If I see them down, I speak life into them. Just try to always get the atmosphere in the right place because we need each other not only to win, but to last through this.”
That presence can be important. When thinking about the young, exciting prospects on the Pirates at the moment,
De Los Santos isn’t top-ofmind as a player high in rankings. Clearly, the organization understands the importance of his place on the roster, though.
De Los Santos helped support his teammates and Cruz and Castro repaid him with home runs.
“Those are my brothers,” De Los Santos said. “That’s the best way I can put it.”