Two games is too small to draw a conclusion, but Yuniesky Betancourt is starting July off right.  Here are his lines:

7/1: 2-4, 2 RBI
7/2: 1-2, 1 R, 1 BB

You read that correct: Yuni got a 4-pitch walk last night.  Astounding.  That’s as unlikely as Miguel Cairo getting two doubles in a game or Willie Bloomquist getting an extra base hit.  Yuni’s last walk was on May 30, against the Tigers’ Nate Roberton (who faces the M’s on Sunday).  So Yuni’s already bested his walk total from June (0), and has one third his RBI count (6).  I’ll take it.

One Betancourt’s having a better July than Yuniesky, though.  Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was freed yesterday after being held hostage in the Colombian jungle for six years by the FARC revoluntionary militant group.  She promptly embraced her children:

“Nirvana, paradise — that must be very similar to what I feel at this moment,” Betancourt said, fighting back tears as her son reached over to kiss her. “It was because of them that I kept up my will to get out of that jungle.”

Ingrid’s June was probably a bit rougher than Yuni’s, and her July’s already a bit better.

June was a rough month for Yuniesky Betancourt.  Let’s start with the numbers:

.220/.220/.308 (slash stats), 6 2B, 1 3B, 6 RBI, no walks, 6 strikeouts, 1 CS, .235 BABIP, -1.15 WPA, -0.22 Clutch

Those numbers are just awful.  Yuni didn’t hit, didn’t walk, and didn’t help his team at all.  He didn’t even play that much.  His 23 games were as few as he’s played in any month since I started this blog last September (he had a leg injury then), though he only missed three of the team’s games, including last night because he had dental surgery.  Still, Yuni managed to rack up the second worst WPA among shortstops in June.  Only the shell of Miguel Tejada played worse.  Ugh.  If you want to point to a reason why Yuni’s been awful (besides lack of ability in playing baseball), look to his BABIP.  Since he doesn’t walk (seriously, he didn’t get a base on balls all month), his offensive production is based on his balls in play dropping for hits.  In June, they dropped less than one out of every four times.  Again, ugh.

To add injury to insult, June was also the month that Yuni was spiked by Brandon Inge and mitt-punched by Mike Napoli.  I bet his dentist didn’t treat him gingerly, either.  Even his soccer-playing friend Maykel Galindo was sidelined by a “sports hernia” surgery.  And, to add a bit more insult, this month also had Michael Lewis’ story in Vanity Fair calling out Yuni for not being very forthcoming about how he came forth to the U.S.

It’s been really, really bad.  Here are some defensive numbers (for the whole season):

9 errors, .973 fielding percentage,  .811 RZR,  12 OOZ

These stats from The Hardball Times actually show some improvement in the field.  Yuni only made two errors in June (the fewest in any month this year) and raised his RZR by 30 points, probably due to making five out of zone plays.  Yuni’s leapfrogged Bobby Crosby, and is only the third-worst defensive shortstop in the AL.  Julio Lugo is still chilling in the cellar.

When the 2008 season began, I was genuinely hoping and believing that it would be Yuni’s ascent into a legitimate major league baseball player.  I’ve pretty much given up that dream.

Go M’s!

Yuniesky Betancourt is good friends with Cuban defector soccer player Maykel Galindo. This is a story that’s been widely reported, but I was completely unaware of until the Mariners’ website posted a story on the two reconnecting in Los Angeles. Here now, is a timeline of Yuni and Maykel:

January 28, 1981: Maykel Galindo is born , one year and three days before Yuni. Both are born and grow up in Villa Clara.

1991-1992: Yuni and Maykel allegedly first meet and become friends.

1994: Maykel leaves Villa Clara to train for soccer in Havana.

2003: Yuni defects on a speedboat (or so the story goes).

July 9, 2005: After scoring his country’s lone goal in a 3-1 CONCACAF Gold Cup loss against Costa Rica in Seattle, Galindo defects from Cuba. ESPN’s Andrew Winner tells the story best:

He found himself alone in the team hotel. The otherwise omnipresent team chaperones were nowhere in sight. Galindo looked left and right and saw space.

At that moment, Galindo made the snap decision to leave his team and try to defect.

He pressed a button for a random floor of the hotel, made his way out of the hotel through the parking garage and jumped onto a Metro bus outside the hotel.

Frantically trying to communicate in Spanish, he used the driver’s cell phone to dial the only local phone number he had — to one of the team’s Seattle-based liaisons, a high school Spanish teacher named Alex Zahajko. Zahajko picked Galindo up and, not long after, helped him contact U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Galindo then announced his intention to defect.

Wow. That’s probably a bit less daring than a speedboat, but relying on the kindness of a Metro bus driver AND a high school Spanish teacher takes a bit of guile and charm.  Zahajko just so happened to play in a rec soccer league with Adrian Hanauer, one of the owners of the Seattle Sounders, and helped get Galindo a tryout with the team.

July 28th, 2005: Yuni makes his debut with the Seattle Mariners.  Shortly thereafter, Yuni and Galindo reconnect. Here’s a quote from Yuni on that meeting:

“It was just like always, especially when you first come here, you don’t know anybody and you don’t have your family… You stick with each other, and give each other a hug, and start reminiscing about old times.”

September 9, 2005: Galindo makes his debut with the Seattle Sounders in a game against the Montreal Impact.  Two weeks later, he’d score his first goal for the Sounders, also against the Impact

October 1, 2005: In the USL Championship, Galindo scores an equalizer goal that helps send the game into penalty kicks.  The Sounders win on PKs, 4-3.  Maykel fist pounds Roger Levesque at some point.  Fans wave their signs.  Yuni attends the game.  Maykel says, “He attended that game, and it was very beautiful for me to have this guy [there] that I spent my childhood with.”

May 7, 2006:  The awesomely-named goalie Preston Burpo, Galindo’s once-and-future teammate, knees Galindo in the face.  Burpo get a yellow card, but Galindo gets a cheekbone fracture and can’t play again until July.

August 23, 2006: Galindo throws out the first pitch at a Mariners game.  Yuni catches it.  That had to be a nice moment.  The Mariners are then crushed by the Yankees, 9-2.  Yuni does get an RBI single, though.

September 9, 2006: Galindo finishes his injury-shortened season with 4 goals and four assists in 9 games.  That’s a lot of scoring for soccer.

February 17, 2007: Galindo moves up to Major League Soccer’s Chivas USA.  Playing in Southern California opens up new opportunities for Galindo, like living in Torrance and getting to do photo-ops with Nomar Garciaparra.

April 7, 2007: After just a few games in the MLS, The Offside declares Galindo “the fastest man in the MLS.“  I’m not sure if Yuni is the ______est anything in baseball.  Maybe the Awesomest Shortstop Nicknamed Rikimbilli.  Yuni wins that contest hands down.

July 19, 2007: Galindo’s Chivas USA gets spanked by the (lower league) Sounders 3-1 in the US Open Cup.

October 2007: Galindo leads Chivas USA with 12 goals in the regular season, and wins the team’s Golden Boot, which sounds kind of harsh, but is actually soccer-speak for MVP or best scorer.

June 11, 2008: Galindo has a second hernia surgery (his right groin’s been hurting), and is not likely to suit up again until August. (Does the MLS have disabled/inactive list?)

June 27, 2008: Galindo last logs onto his ridiculous, flash-filled MySpace page.  His current mood is “stressed.”  Hernia surgeries will do that to you.

In summation, Maykel Galindo’s been profiled on ESPN, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, and The Beautiful Game.  He’s a legit (North American) pro soccer player, and occasionally hangs out with Yuniesky Betancourt.  I wish him all the best.

On Friday, the Mariners and San Diego Padres decided to wear the ugliest jerseys in their collective histories, relying on questionable fashion choices of the late 1970s. I’m a firm advocate of the Mariners’ iconic trident cap–I frequently get compliments when I wear mine and “tridents” and “poseidon god of the sea” are two of the top 3 Google searches that lead hear. That said, the M’s powder blue jerseys lack a certain… viewability.  Here’s a gallery of Yuni’s style from Friday’s game:

Yuni examines his bat to make sure that it also isn’t a product of shoddy 1970s planning.   Yuni went 0-5 and left an untold number of runners on base.  The team stranded 18 runners.  I’d say Yuni was responsible for five fourths of them.

Yuni’s mouth is agape.  That hat looks marvelous.  Also, note that in the first photo, the M’s used their standard navy blue “compass rose” batting helmets.  The Padres had special brown-and-yellow extra-ugly helmets made specially for the game (or discovered in the catacombs of Jack Murphy Stadium).  The clashing helmets had a jarring effect that reminded me that, despite high oil prices and terrible Seattle baseball, the game was not, in fact, played in the late 1970s.

Here, you can see that the stitching and letters on Yuni’s jersey were flawless, as was his balanced swing.  Yuni successfully executed his plan to hit a weak pop up in foul territory.

Yuni is pleased after successfully throwing to Richie Sexson.  He does this all the time, I swear.

To celebrate the M’s 4-2 victory (in which he played an almost insignificant role) Yuni eats his blue jersey.  Electric blue is definitely the tastiest color of food not found in nature.

I’ve written about Yuniesky Betancourt’s defection from Cuba before, and was left with a dim view and lots of unanswered questions surrounding Gus Dominguez, who orchestrated Yuni’s flight, and Jaime Torres, Yuni’s agent once he was legal to play in the States.  Torres was in the news earlier this month for representing a shiny new Cuban defector, Dayan Viciendo.  Coincidentally, Viciendo played for Yuni’s old Cuban team, Villa Clara and has a funny name (go on, say it out loud). But Dominguez has gotten some better press.

Michael Lewis, the greatest sportswriter out there, wrote a story for the July issue of Vanity Fair profiling Dominguez’ relationship with Cuban baseball.  Where I was only left to wonder, Lewis interviewed guys like Dominguez, Rene Arocha and Henry Blanco, and traveled to Cuba (through Canada).  He spent a lot of time around the Villa Clara team, especially their manager, Victor Mesa.  That’s where Yuni’s name first pops up:

Mesa’s Villa Clara team vies for the lead in an important stat: player defections. Live through a season with Víctor Mesa and a few days on a raft surrounded by sharks doesn’t seem so terrifying. Mesa’s shortstop and catcher were banned from baseball for speaking on the phone with Cuban defectors. His shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt hopped a boat to Florida one night in 2003. Established as Seattle’s starting shortstop two seasons ago, Betancourt was asked if he had problems adjusting to big-league managers. “We have a manager in Cuba, and that manager is worse than anything you have in the major leagues,” Betancourt replied. “His name is Víctor Mesa.”

An invisible line runs from Víctor Mesa, yelling from his dugout, to Gus Dominguez, in his cell inside a California prison. For the one thing that the U.S. attorney general and the jailed sports agent agree upon is that all the trouble began when Yuniesky Betancourt fled Víctor Mesa’s ball club.

That’s a intriguing set up.  Lewis quickly jumps to Dominguez’s trial, when the government relied on the word of drug dealer Ysbel Medina-Santos to convict Dominguez:

Medina-Santos told Dominguez that Betancourt had promised to pay his smugglers 5 percent of his first major-league contract. They heard he had a deal with the Mariners, and they wanted their money. Now. The contract was unenforceable, but the smugglers were prepared to collect on their own. If Dominguez didn’t pay them, Medina-Santos threatened, they’d break Betancourt’s legs and end his career. What point would there be in that? Dominguez asked. Break his legs and you’ll never get your money.

Sheesh.  I’m glad Yuni’s legs are fine.  Maybe people should stop pressuring him to leg out more stolen bases.

As I hypothesized before, Yuni may have not been an angel in these dealings.  At the very least, he lied unnecessarily, and he probably didn’t do right by Dominguez, who, as you just read, helped saved Yuni’s legs from massive breakage.  Lewis, who like the court in Dominguez’ case, didn’t hear directly from Yuni, says the same, more plainly:

Betancourt then stiffed the agent who had fed and housed him for six months. He signed the contract with the Mariners that Dominguez had negotiated on his behalf, but paid whatever commission he paid to someone else…. The Dominguez side never called him as a witness, mainly because they had no idea what he might say. He’d already told three different stories, two of them to immigration agents, about how and when he’d come to the United States. He declined to return phone calls, and slammed the door in the face of the private eye they’d hired to track him down.

Yuni blowing off reporters and being silent about his trip from Cuba is one thing, but staying mute when the guy who helped him earn boatloads of cash (and protected his legs) is facing hard time?  That’s rude, Yuni.

Yuni doesn’t come off as completely heartless.  During one of Lewis’ conversations with Mesa (who’s general craziness adds another funny layer to The Onion story), he shows some affection for Yuni:

Even now in Cuba, ballplayers who defect are officially forgotten. Their stats are stricken from the record books, and their names aren’t meant to be spoken. And yet here stands Víctor Mesa with his arm draped over the shoulders of the kid who is now the Seattle Mariners’ shortstop. “He was like my son,” says Mesa. “My very, very difficult son.”

So even that’s a bit of a dig.  Side note: the whole “he who shall not be named” thing in Cuba may partly explain why people call Yuni “Rikimbilli.”

I’ve excerpted almost every substantial reference to Yuni (you should go read the whole thing, though; it’s awesome), and Yuni comes off as the most misguided guy in the story; even the drug dealer doesn’t seem so bad.  Clearly, Yuni’s first few months in the U.S. weren’t his finest moments.  I hope he can find a way to atone for any mistakes he’s made.

(hat tip: I Want to be a Sports Agent)

This is like the hidden ball trick, only with no practical application:

I wonder how many times Yuni and Adrian practiced that.

Just go read it: Cuban Refugee Yuniesky Betancourt Prefers Castro To M’s Manager John McLaren.

Anytime someone tells me it’s silly or creepy or a sign of mental illness to write a blog devoted to an average-to-below average shortstop, I’m a little bit hurt.  Mostly by the insult, but also because my assailant doesn’t quite get the innate joy of Yuniesky Betancourt.  He can change your life.  The Onion gets it.

That said, this article gets a couple things wrong:

#1: They picked the day of John McLaren’s firing to run this article.  Bad timing.

#2: Yuni never EVER says this much in post-game interviews.  I wish he would actually talk about Castro or McLaren or anything.  (I’d especially like to know what he and Adrian Beltre talk about.)

#3: Yuni doesn’t hate Miguel Cairo.  (His critique of Cairo is apt, though.)

#4: Yuni flees countries in speedboats, not makeshift rafts.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty great story.

I haven’t really been watching this Mariners homestand very much. (How’ve they been doing?) The combination of paying work, nice weather, European soccer, and the desire for human contact have pushed the Mariners to the backburner. Actually, all those things and Dexter.

After getting partway through the first season of this Showtime, I realized two things. First, while I thought Michael C. Hall would always be best known as the socially cold and awkward funeral director on the pay TV series Six Feet Under, he’s actually much more suited to the role of socially cold and awkward forensics expert and mass murderer on this pay TV series. Second, Dexter is the anti-Yuni.

I’ll break it down:

So, in the end (by which I mean that last, trivial category) I guess Yuniesky Betancourt isn’t that different from a serial killer killer.

Each month I point out how The Hardball Times’ Revised Zone Rating (RZR) thinks Yuni plays below average defense. A couple days ago, MGL released Ultimate Zone Rating ZR numbers for this year, and Yuni is… awful. Right now he’s the worst shortstop in baseball. If he plays at his current level of suck, he’ll cost the Mariners 31 runs over 150 games, which is 10 runs worse than anyone else (specifically, David Eckstein and Bobby Crosby) and 67 runs worse than Gold Glover Orlando Cabrera.
According to these numbers, the only players worse at defending their respective positions are Mike Jacobs at first base, Jim Edmonds and Josh Hamilton in center field, and Brad Hawpe, Bobby Abreu, and Jeff Francoeur in right field. (Ken Griffey, Jr. is tied with Yuni at -31)
As I’ve said before, I can’t believe that Yuni is that bad a shortstop. Yes, he’s a textbook case of scouting and statistics not lining up, but I don’t think the numbers are telling the whole story. Yes, Yuni’s range seems to be shrinking, but is he really one of the 10 worst fielders in baseball? I’d say he’s not even the worst fielder on the M’s (that’d go to Raul Ibanez or Richie Sexson).

Here’s a play-by-play recap of the 7th inning of yesterday morning’s Mariners against the Blue Jays
Top 7th: Seattle
J. Reed singled to center
R. Sexson singled to left, J. Reed to second
All right, two singles to lead off the inning. This could be something!
K. Johjima unknown into double play catcher to shortstop, J. Reed out at second
… or not. Way to go, Kenji!
Then, this happened:

Video!
Y. Betancourt tripled to deep right center, R. Sexson scored
Wooooooooo! Yuni’s triple was the only extra base hit the M’s had all day.
I. Suzuki intentionally walked
Obvious.
W. Bloomquist popped out to second
Also a foregone conclusion.
1 runs, 3 hits, 0 errors
Seattle 1, Toronto 1
With that one exciting swing, Yuni gave the Mariners a chance, and staved off fears that Felix Hernandez would get a loss despite allowing no earned runs (way to misplay, Jeremy Reed!). But Yuni wasn’t done.
Bottom 7th: Toronto
- L. Overbay grounded out to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt
- K. Mench grounded out to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt
- B. Wilkerson fouled out to shallow left (to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt)
0 runs, 0 hits, 0 errors
Seattle 1, Toronto 1
Yep, Yuni made all three outs in the bottom half of the seventh. They were fairly routine, though Yuni did wave off third baseman Willie Bloomquist on that foul out. (I hope that counts as an out-of-zone play.)
Looking at win probabilities, before Yuni’s triple, the M’s had just a 26.4% chance of winning the game. After the triple, they had a 48% chance. And by the end of the 7th, it was dead even at 50%. That’s a swing of more than 23% over just six outs. That’s a heck of an inning.

I can’t scan the whole list (I’m not an ESPN Insider), but Fire Joe Morgan says that one of Bill James 10 Commandments of Sabermetricians is:

5) Thou shalt make no idol of the light-hitting middle infielder.

Wow.  I’ve so totally sinned.  I’ll have to say ten Hail Rotisseries and pray to Voros McCracken for forgiveness.

In completely unrelated news, M’s pitcher Brandon Morrow has been told to change his sleeping position to avoid hurting his throwing shoulder.  (Hat tip: Enjoy the Enjoyment.)

Yuniesky Betancourt aggressively took an extra base in Friday’s game against the Red Sox.  For the first time in a week, the result wasn’t open wounds, curse words and shaking heads.

Safe!  Here’s how Yuni celebrated his non-maiming:

Hooray!

Yuni’s run proved to be especially undecisive in the Mariners’ 8-0 victory over the Sox.

On a more personal note, the day after Yuni didn’t get decked or cleated, I managed to fall off my bike and scrape up my hand something fierce.  So the injury bug has been passed from Yuni to his devotees…  I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

Yuniesky Betancourt’s had a bad baserunning week, but on Saturday, he and the rest of the M’s got to salute Latino “beisbol.” The Seattle Times tabbed Yuni to model the team’s special “Marineros” jersey.

Photo (c) Ben VanHouten, Seattle Times.

Yuni’s pose, which I think is officially called the “Bo Knows Pose,” is the exact same pose I struck for my Little League team photo in first grade.  My arms look wimpy compared to Yuni’s, which look miniscule compared to Bo Jackson’s.  This probably explains why Yuni folds in the face of Mike Napoli while Bo could shed off the Seahawks’ Brian Bosworth.

That crumpled corpse in white is Yuniesky Betancourt. Here’s a close-up:

Ouch.  I hope Yuni’s discarded batting helmet took the brunt of that blow.

I could go off on Mike Napoli like I did Brandon Inge (Napoli’s got awesome power, yet he’s not strong enough to wrest the full-time catching job away from Jeff Mathis!) but there’s no point.  Yuni shouldn’t have gone home on this play.  He took off on a pitch Ichiro singled to center, and kept running even though the ball was fielded cleanly and nowhere near the gap.  The M’s were only down by one run, and the next batter was Jose Lopez, who has torched the Angels this week.  If Miguel Cairo was hitting second, it’d make a bit more sense.  In this situation, it’s inexcusable.  I hope after John McLaren finished his press conference today (link contained bleeped f words) he chewed out third base coach Sam Perlozzo.

Brandon Inge is the worst kind of baseball player.  He can’t stick with one position, frequently switching between catcher, third base, and the outfield.  If he had the drive of a guy like Yuniesky Betancourt, he’d stick with one position until he was demonstrably below average at it.  But no, he switches positions whenever he wants to or (rarely, I bet) when the manager asks him to.  Does versatility really help teams win ballgames?  The Detroit Tigers sure don’t seem to be winning much.  Against everyone except the Seattle Mariners.

Above all: Brandon Inge is mean-spirited because he accidentally stepped on Yuniesky Betancourt’s right index finger.  There, I said it.