Dodgers’ Don Mattingly stays with Yasiel Puig: ‘It’s sink or swim’

Yasiel Puig, lost since at least the All-Star break, not only found himself back in the lineup Wednesday but moved up from the seventh spot to leadoff.

Guess that’s another approach to try to wake him up.

For Manager Don Mattingly it’s simple: The Dodgers need Puig to get going.

And there’s no arguing the Dodgers are a vastly better team when Puig is on top of his game, as he was when tearing it up in May. It’s just that he hasn’t been for months.

“At the end of the day we know we need him,” Mattingly said. “We know we’re going to need this guy to get going. And when he’s going good, we’re a better team.

“It’s time. We’re at that point where it’s just time for him to get it rolling. Put him in there, sink or swim, and just go with it.”

Yep, sink or swim. Right now, of course, he’s drowning.

At the All-Star break Puig was batting .309 with 12 home runs, 52 runs batted in. Since then he’s hit .255 with one homer, eight RBIs and a .369 slugging percentage.

Sure, when Puig is going well, the Dodgers clearly are a better team. But he hasn’t been going well for two months. Mattingly would rather gamble that he will yet come around rather than play his alternatives -- Andre Ethier, Scott Van Slyke and Joc Pederson.

I’m already on record thinking Puig’s been given enough rope and now it’s time to try Ethier, but Mattingly -- or someone -- is more focused on his potential than actual results in the stretch. After hitting 12 homers in his first 82 games, he’s hit one in his last 49.

“Yasiel basically has got us to this point,” Mattingly said. “Everything we’ve tried to do so far is really been trying to get him going, trying to take a little pressure off of him in different spots. It’s the same I would do with anybody. The same with whoever it would be.”

Puig was late again Wednesday, though Mattingly said he called in advance to say his mother had a back issue and he was taking her to the hospital.

Still late, however, is his bat. And the Dodgers have dug in, sink or swim.