Yuniesky Betancourt’s on a bit of a doubles binge. He drove in Jeff Clement with a double yesterday (video here) and has three doubles this week. In the same stretch of time (since May 7), he only has three singles. So, while he’s having no trouble getting two-base hits, he’s awful at getting two base hits in a game.
Yuni has 8 multi-hit games this season with just one in May, during Sunday’s 6-3 win over the White Sox. In fact, the M’s do remarkably well when Yuni gets just two hits.

Mariners when Yuni’s hitless: 2-13
Mariners when Yuni get 1 hit: 9-9
Mariners when Yuni gets 2 hits: 5-1
Mariners when Yuni gets 3 hits: 0-1
Mariners when Yuni gets 4 hits: 0-1
Mariners when Yuni doubles: 6-3
Mariners when Yuni triples: 1-0
Mariners when Yuni homers: 0-1
Mariners when Yuni walks: 1-2

There are several conclusions to draw from this tiny data set. Yuni’s not likely to get more than one hit in a game. Too bad the Mariners aren’t likely to win unless he does. This all makes sense–teams are more likely to win when they hit the dang ball. Plus, Ichiro, who usually bats after Yuni, hits better with runners on base. The sight of Yuni on the base paths must warm his heart and his bat. Surprisingly, Ichiro hits a tad worse with runners on just first base, which explains the M’s losing record when Yuni walks (only it doesn’t). Yuni’s hits aren’t that much more likely to come in the middle of rallies, though–his batting average is 6 points higher (though his OPS is identical) with runners in scoring position, and only 16 points higher with runners on at all. It might all boil down to Yuni and all his teammates only being able to hit bad pitching.  That would explain why he and the team bunch their hits together infrequently.
As I was typing up this post, I saw a comment left by “andrewwinner” on the mission statement: “I send text messages every time Yuni hits a double that say “Yuni Doubles”. I went way over on my phone bill last month but I didn’t care.”
It’s been an expensive week for you, Andre.  I hope you’re happy.

Here are some pictures from the Mariners’ second game of the season 4/1/08, which was the first Felix Day of this already-finished season.

Step 1: Felix pitches…

Step 2: Kenji catches…

Step 3: Cotton candy for everyone!

The Safeco Field roof closed at about the same speed as the Mariners’ hopes of making the playoffs.

All these photos were taken by my girlfriend/personal photographer. She’s not the hugest baseball fan, so she often turned away from the game and got great pictures of stuff like the Safeco Field sign.

I think this sign is among the most photogenic stadium signs in baseball. The outside of Wrigley Field is probably the most photographed, but a lot of big stadiums don’t have great signage like Safeco.

It’s not the most creative pizza combination, but “The Yuniesky” sure is delicious. I really like that Yuni felt that he had to add “and cheese” to his pizza order.

Yuni singled in this at bat, driving in Vidro from third. Once upon a time Yuni was a clutch hitter, and Vidro got on base.

Strangely, there’s no photographic evidence of Josh Hamilton’s two-run homer off of J.J. Putz. Did that bomb doom the Mariners’ chances for the game, despite a late-game double by Yuni?

Yu Betcha.

So on Thursday, Richie Sexson did this:

It got some publicitiy (and a suspension).

Right after Richie turned his helmet into a weapon, here’s what happened:

As you can (kinda) see, Yuniesky Betancourt ran out to aid Richie, took off his helmet, and made a quarter-hearted attempt at bludgeoning Texas Rangers’ second baseman Ian Kinsler.  That’s just the kind of teammate Yuni is.  Dependable and a bit of a copycat.

Jeff at Lookout Landing has a brutal, accurate breakdown of Yuni’s statistically poor play for the Mariners the past few years.  His conclusion: Yuni’s a below average shortstop, but since he’s not too highly paid, he’s valuable to the team.

I’ve looked at similar numbers (especially RZR) and have cognitively understood what Jeff’s saying.  Still, it breaks my heart.  Just like losing 9 out of 10 games breaks my heart.

Baseball statistics are great when they go counter to what you think to be true.  One example is that Derek Jeter’s a terrible fielder, despite what Yankees fans and Gold Glove voters say.  Another is Voros McCracken’s theory on pitchers’ control of the batting average of balls put in play.

But statistics are even better when they confirm what you already know.  Like that Felix Hernandez throws the ball fast.  Or, that Yuniesky Betancourt swings too freaking much.

Right now, Yuni is swinging at half of all the pitches he sees.  That’s the 37th highest in the majors this season and highest on the Mariners.   Yuni’s not being choosy, but he’s also not completely wasting his swings; he’s making lots of contact.  He hits 90% of the pitches he swings at, which is 18th in baseball (Ichiro makes contact almost 94% of the time, 3rd best in baseball.)

Of course, he doesn’t get hits and outs with those swings.  My math has Yuni making contact on 178 of the 376 pitches he’s seen.  He’s only put the ball in play 109 times, so that’s 69 foul balls. (Yuni fouls off 18% of his pitches… that seems like a lot.)

These raw numbers don’t say too much–guys having great seasons like Carl Crawford, Joe Crede, Emil Brown, Mike Jacobs, and Josh Hamilton all swing more than Yuni, but so do Vlad Guererro, Robinson Cano, and Khalil Greene (all of whom aren’t doing so well).  What’s distressing for Yuni is that his likelihood to swing at a pitch has stayed steady the past few years, even though pitchers are throwing him fewer strikes.  Pitchers threw him strikes about 54% of the time the past two seasons, while this year he’s only getting strikes 51% of the time.  On the flipside, Yuni is hitting a higher percentage of all those balls he’s getting–he’s connecting on 80% of balls thrown outside the strike zone.

Yuni will never have an eye like Frank Thomas, who’s only swung at 14% of the balls outside the strike zone he’s seen since 2005, but he should lay off some the junk that Vicente Padilla serves him tonight.

Yuniesky Betancourt has joined the rest of the Mariners by having a terrible, terrible month of May. His line:
3/22, (.136/.136/.136), 1 run, 1 stolen base (watch ‘em here), 1 K
Yuni’s week of weakness has spoiled all that praise I gave him for starting the season strong. His rate stats now sit at .270/.283/.374, which are ugly, even for Yuni. I know it’s just a small slump, but Yuni’s at bats aren’t that pretty. He’s hitting a lot of weak fly balls, and swinging at too many pitches.
I’d still say he’s playing better than a six-year-old, though.

I made up a lame statistic to highlight Yuniesky Betancourt’s inconsistent effort at shortstop, but the guy can play. Evidence from Monday night’s game:

That 6-4-3 must’ve been Yuni’s way of celebrating Cinco De Mayo. Wait… he’s Cuban? But I thought he had a Mexican passport…

Seattle P-I writer John Marshall wrote an updated story of Yuniesky Betancourt’s arrival in the U.S. The conventional story was that Yuni took a raft to Mexico, then was held in a jail for a few weeks, but got released. From there, he was welcomed with flowers by the Seattle Mariners. Well, the first part of that story isn’t true. Marshall writes:

Betancourt’s route to the U.S. turned out to be much more circuitous. He left Cuba not on a raft to Mexico but rather smuggled aboard a 28-foot Baja speedboat that was supposed to bring him to the Florida Keys. An unscheduled stop to avoid U.S. Coast Guard boats left Betancourt on a beach in the Bahamas for four days. He later made his way to the U.S. on another boat, crossed the U.S. and was thought by prosecutors to have entered Tijuana, Mexico, on a fraudulent Mexican passport and proceeded to Mexico City.

Marshall got all this from the federal trial of Gustavo “Gus” Dominguez, who was sentenced to five years in jail last July for smuggling Cubans into the U.S.

Greg Bishop of the Seattle Times tackled this in a story last year, in which he said that Betancourt scheduled to be a witness in Dominguez’s trial. From what I can gather (namely, from this Miami Herald article), Yuni didn’t make it down to Miami for the trial. The trial was in the first week of April 2007, which is when the Mariners were stuck in Cleveland, thanks to the snow.

There are a couple interesting, non-speedboat parts to this story. First, Yuni probably never paid Dominguez to help smuggle him out of Cuba. From CNN:

“Gustavo continues losing money,” said Ysbel Medina-Santos, the drug dealer who claimed on the witness stand that he was paid by Dominguez to smuggle in Betancourt and the five other players. Medina-Santos, who wore a faded blue prison uniform because he is in custody waiting to be sentenced on the drug charges, said Dominguez paid him $100,000 to smuggle Betancourt out of Cuba. “This ballplayer business was a failure,” added Medina-Santos, who said that Dominguez promised to pay him a percentage of any bonus a player who he smuggled out of Cuba received from a major league baseball team.

And what’s the going rate for smuggling a ballplayer? Well, apparently Henry Blanco, the Cubs’ backup catcher, wired Medina $225,000 for getting him out of Cuba.

Perhaps Yuni didn’t pay Dominguez because as soon as he was in the U.S., he signed with agent Jaime Torres (whose name is often spelled “Jamie,” though I trust The New York Times on Jaime). Torres seems to have a knack for connecting with recent Cuban defectors–he’s Jose Contreras’ and Yoslan Herrera’s agent, and has held auditions for Cuban players in the Dominican Republic.  (Torres was also Sandy Alomar’s agent for a while.)  Yuni’s signing with Torres seems abrupt–Bishop’s article even says “All of a sudden, Torres was his agent.”  I’m not saying Yuni should have to pay to go from one country to another (though I have had to give some consulates $50 visa fees for my travels), but there’s some shady details in Yuni’s trip to the States.

Here it is in game log form:

Yuniesky Betancourt singled to right (Fliner (Fly)).
Yuniesky Betancourt advanced on a stolen base to 2B.
Ichiro Suzuki singled to center (Grounder). Yuniesky Betancourt scored. (Mariners 1 - Yankees 1)

And, here it is in video form:

Sadly, this was the only offensive bright spot for the Mariners on Saturday, unless you get stoked when Kenji Johjima hits two singles. The Mariners are now 0-2 when Miguel Cairo starts.

Here’s some grisly video from the first inning of Friday’s Mariners game against the Yankees:

There are several reasons why this play is awful. On the surface, it’s because Yuni makes an error, which is never fun to watch. Also, he makes an error while fielding a grounder hit by Derek Jeter, who’s a terrible terrible defensive shortstop (as Fire Joe Morgan will tell you). And, to top off what was an abysmal start to an abysmal series against the Yankees, Mike Blowers says at the end of the clip, “That’s a play we see him make all the time.” You can choose to infer that Blowers is saying that Yuni usually successfully fields grounders, but I prefer to interpret it as Blowers acknowledging that Yuni is prone to mental lapses in the field.

To make matters worse, Jeter ended up scoring in that inning, laying the groundwork for a 5-1 loss. Yuni’s error was so terrible that it made me invent a new statistic, the Game Losing Error or GaLE. It’s slimly based on the Game Winning RBI (GWRBI) which was a popular stat in the 1980s–when a batter knocked in the go-ahead run, he was credited with a GWRBI. It supposedly measured hitters’ clutchiness, until everyone realized that it pretty much reflected regular (non-GW) RBI totals. (Read Dave Pinto’s post for more on GWRBI’s.)

GaLE’s work a lot like GWRBI–when an error leads to a go-ahead run scoring, the fielder that makes the error gets dinged with a GaLE. So, Yuni’s error on Friday gives him a GaLE. What about the rest of the season? Here’s a game-by-game breakdown

4/1 vs. the Rangers: In another shortstop-on-shortstop error, Yuni’s errant throw turns Michael Young’s double play ball into a fielder’s choice. Young fails to score, but J.J. Putz fails when Josh Hamilton hits a game-winning home run in the 9th. No GaLE
4/5 vs. the Orioles: Yuni botches a Ramon Hernandez grounder. On the same play, Luke Scott scores on an errorful throw by Raul Ibanez. That tied the game at 2, though the O’s went onto win, 6-4. Technically, no GaLE.
4/16 vs. the A’s: Yuni’s error lets Bobby Crosby score, but the Mariners win 4-2. Thanks Felix! No GaLE.
4/24 vs. the Orioles: Adam Jones reaches thanks to a Yuni error, but he’s stranded. M’s lose. Sorry Jarrod. No GaLE.

Final total: Yuni has just one GaLE this year.

So… maybe this stat is especially useless. It’s reliant on the whims of the scorekeeper and the game’s scenario. Still, I’m bothered that FanGraph’s WPA doesn’t count defense into its WPA and Clutch stats. Derek Jeter gets credit for getting on board in Friday’s game, when the blame should go straight to Yuni.