How’s this for a week for Mets outfield prospect Cesar Puello?
The Double-A Binghamton right fielder hit five home runs in four games and added three doubles in a 10-for-17 kick that bumped his batting average to .320 and his OPS to an Eastern League-best .999.
Then, amid the eye-opening outburst, he was implicated along with Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun for an alleged PED connection to Anthony Bosch’s Biogenesis clinic.
Just your standard breakout pro season mixed with some drug innuendo for the 22-year-old from the Dominican Republic, who had dropped to Baseball America’s No. 18 Mets prospect entering the season after starting a mediocre, injury-filled 2012 campaign in the No. 5 spot.
The on-field results, at least, are encouraging to an organization that deploys a bereft outfield in Queens and is short on high-end outfield talent beyond 2011 first-round pick Brandon Nimmo, playing at low-A Savannah.
Puello was batting .250 without a homer through 13 games before he missed more than a week due to a left wrist injury. The right-hander built a 15-game hitting streak around that absence, and on May 14 moved up to the third spot in the lineup from the 5-6-7 range.
“He has 70 raw power [on the 20-80 scale used by scouts], but our focus right now is to help him learn the strike zone and make him learn how to control the barrel,” Binghamton manager Pedro Lopez told milb.com last month. “Once he does that, his power will come.”
That power from the sturdy, 6-foot-2, 195-pounder was on full display this week. He went yard to right-center on Sunday at New Hampshire. Back at Binghamton for a three-game set against Trenton, the Yankees’ affiliate, he homered to center against big righty Zach Nuding on Monday night, dinged a three-run blast to left-center on Tuesday night and in the Wednesday matinee pulled solo shots to tie the game in the sixth inning and take the lead in the eighth.
The barrage brought Puello’s season total to 12 home runs to go with 15 stolen bases (in 18 tries) that hint at the “five-tool” label.
But the other half of his manager’s appraisal — of free-swinging tendencies that produced 43 strikeouts against 13 walks through 49 games — should be cautionary.
Puello is the lone minor leaguer on the reported list of targets for an MLB suspension. Because he is on the Mets’ 40-man roster, however, he is protected by the muscle of the union — unlike former Miami Hurricanes and Tigers minor league pitcher Cesar Carrillo, who was popped for 100 games in March.
“Right now I can’t talk about anything else, only about baseball,” Puello told local reporters Tuesday, declining to address the scandal. “It’s not a distraction, I just want to talk about baseball.”
The baseball part’s been just fine.