DENVER — Yasiel Puig is getting closer to a return, close enough that Don Mattingly was willing to divulge that Andre Ethier will move to left field once Puig is back.
Monday in Arizona, Puig ran “really well, felt good about it, close to 100 percent getting down the line,” Mattingly said. The 24-year-old is still on track to begin a minor-league rehab assignment later this week.
Beyond that, there’s no timetable for Puig to return.
Ethier has played an errorless right field in 33 starts this season. But Puig has the better arm, so shifting Ethier to left field isn’t a surprising move. In what’s becoming a remarkable bounceback season at the plate, Ethier is slashing .305/.395/.519 — basically a career year for the 33-year-old outfielder, who signed a six-year contract extension in June 2012.
Between Ethier’s offense and defense, Mattingly didn’t hesitate to foretell the end of the Scott Van Slyke/Alex Guerrero/Kiké Hernandez platoon in left field.
Van Slyke has seen his batting average drop more than 100 points say May 12, from .373 to .264 entering play Monday.
Guerrero has seven hits in his last 39 at-bats dating to May 14. Three are home runs, but his batting average is .179 in that span.
“I think (because of) overexposure over time you start to see teams get a chance to get better looks at you,” Mattingly said. “We talked about Scott, trying to match him up with the right right-hander, things like that. We have to be happy with the job our guys have done. We’ve had multiple things we’ve had to try to overcome and our guys have hung in pretty good for us.”
Hernandez is starting in left field against the Colorado Rockies because “I really wanted to be able to defend left field today with (Clayton) Kershaw, knowing that you’re going to see a stack of righties. I wanted to put our best defender out there.”