Keith Hernandez takes weight jab at Pablo Sandoval

Pablo Sandoval hasn’t been in MLB since 2021, but that didn’t stop his long-standing issues with weight from becoming a topic on the Mets broadcast.

Mets great Keith Hernandez and play-by-play man Gary Cohen began talking about Sandoval after a trivia question about San Francisco’s World Series MVPs in the 2010s. 

“He always had the weight issues,” Hernandez said of Sandoval on the SNY broadcast of Sunday’s Mets-Giants game at Citi Field. “He just fell off a cliff, but he had some big years for the Giants. Didn’t he go to the Red Sox? Just kind of bombed out there. He came back [to the Giants] and didn’t do the push-ups from the dinner table.”

Sandoval, nicknamed Kung Fu Panda, was World Series MVP with the Giants in 2012 after hitting .500 with three homers and four RBIs in a dominant sweep of the Tigers. 

The Venezuelan enjoyed the best years of his career in his first stint with the Giants, from 2008-14. 

Sandoval was an All-Star in 2011 and ’12, and he won three World Series titles in San Francisco (2010, ’12, ’14).

Weight was an issue for Sandoval throughout his career, but it became a major storyline when he signed a five-year, $95 million contract with the Red Sox ahead of the 2015 season and showed up for spring training overweight. 

Sandoval went on to play three lackluster seasons in Boston before returning to the Giants from 2018-20 and closing out his career with the Braves in 2021.

Moments after Hernandez made his comments in the top of the third inning, Giants DH Rafael Devers crushed a three-run homer, and San Francisco went on to rout the Mets, 12-4.