Yandy Díaz is, in a word, strong.
His workout routines have been featured in muscle magazines, he crushes broken-bat home runs and when you sit in front of him and, very carefully, ask him questions about how he's gotten so huge ... his answers are hardly surprising.
"I try to eat anything," Díaz said, through a translator. "I love to eat. I really don't try to go on diets."
But there is one key to his time in the gym, and to his career, that you probably wouldn't expect. An endearing, charming quality to the 6-foot-1, 235-pound All-Star.
Tom and Jerry episodes. Every single day.
"When I’m working out, I always try to watch Tom and Jerry for like an hour," Díaz told me, smiling. "It clears my mind, it relaxes me."
Yes, through batting title-winning seasons in 2023, through two straight years of MVP votes, through his solid start to 2025 -- the Rays DH has tuned into the classic, 1940s kids cartoon. And don't try and tell him to watch a different one. It's Tom and Jerry and only Tom and Jerry.
"To me, Tom and Jerry is the best," Díaz said. "Nothing else comes close. That’s the only one that I watch."
Díaz says he's enjoyed the cat-vs.-mouse dynamic since he was a kid growing up in Villa Clara, Cuba -- the same hometown of Cuban baseball legends Livan and Orlando Hernández. He played in the Cuban National Series from ages 16-19 and then signed with Cleveland in 2013 at the age of 21. Although you might think he's a power hitter by the way he looks, Díaz is actually more of a contact hitter. He rarely chases pitches, he's never hit more than 22 homers in a season, he's never struck out 100 times in the Majors and he's patient at the plate -- maintaining a .368 OBP during his nine-year career.
Maybe, as he's said, it's that calming, hilarious loop of Tom and Jerry pranking each other inside his head that keeps him so relaxed at the plate.
Bases loaded in a postseason game against the Red Sox with Chris Sale on the mound?
Sure, but have you ever watched Tom and Jerry's "Cue Ball Thomas" where Tom swallows 15 pool balls?
That fun side of Tampa Bay's hulking star could also be seen in a candy that's probably, mostly, enjoyed by the same audience watching Tom and Jerry: Skittles.
Díaz just recently discovered the candy a few months ago and fell deeply in love with them.
"I just saw them there," Díaz said. "And the colors, they caught my attention. ... I picked them up and tried them, and now I get them every day."
But of course, the ultimate question was if Díaz cheered for Tom or Jerry. The much bigger, but usually on the losing end, cat; or the smaller, but much more clever, mouse. He had an answer that maybe everyone can relate to.
"There are times I cheer for Tom, other times I cheer for Jerry," Diaz said. "It just depends on the day."
Thank you to MLB.com's Marino Panchano for translation help