Kansas City pitching prospect Miguel “Sugar” Santos has gone AWOL, various team sources have said. Santos is a promising pitcher for KC’s single-A affiliate in Iowa, the Burlington Swing. According to minor league representatives, Santos showed up for the team’s road trip last week but never boarded the bus. Two of his teammates say Santos told them he had to retrieve some items from the clubhouse before coming aboard, but he never returned. The bus left without Santos and the team has not heard from him since.
Santos, whose nickname “Sugar” has caught on since the beginning of the season, was invited to Spring Training in March. He signed with the organization when he was 16 years old and spent two years at the club’s academy in San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic before receiving the call to tryout in Arizona.
While most of his teammates from the academy were assigned to rookie ball, Santos made the single-A team in Burlington. He started off in the team’s rotation and burst onto the scene with a strong April, becoming the best pitcher on the staff. But after getting tangled up with a runner at first base, he injured his foot and hasn’t been the same since. After getting his walking boot off and returning to start, Sugar lost much of the velocity he had at the beginning of the season.
The Burlington manager took note of Santos’ struggles and decided to try him out in the bullpen to see if that would solve his issues. Sugar’s live-in family in Iowa noted that his spirits have been dampened and that he hasn’t been the same since then. Calls have been placed to the academy in the D.R. and to Santos’ family there, but nobody has heard from him yet.
This post is a part of the Friday Film Festival at Larry Brown Sports. All contents of the story are purely fictional and based entirely off the sports movie, Sugar. To learn more about the movie, go here
