Mariners deal Betancourt to Royals

Seattle acquires pair of prospects in excange for shortstop

I’m bummed, but right now that’s about the extent of my depression.  Sure, Yuni getting injured last month was awful.  At the time, I felt it was karma for destroying Endy Chavez’s Marinerdom, but it turns out the left side of the Mariners defensive lineup is curse.   (For the sake of drama, include catchers Kenji Johjima and Jeff Clement in the Mariners monkey paw of despair.)  Apparently this trade for unknowables Daniel Cortes and Derrick Saito, along with the recent departure of Ludacris-enthusiast Mike Morse,  is the true retribution for one bad play, and bountiful potential squandered.

As anyone who can read the dates on this blog can tell, I gave up on Yuni.  Other people so mercilessly and factfully pointed out his undeniable flaws that rooting and writing about him felt like watching the beginning of Munich–it’s kind of confusing, you know someone’s going to die, but hopefully something good will come of it in the end.  And perhaps that’s the case now: the Mariners have DD pitchers, and Yuni has the change to disappoint or surprise a new batch of fans, hang out with Willie B, Gil Meche and Jose Guillen, and maybe even take a bath in a neat fountain.

Kansas City may be a cow town, but they have a good stadium, and a lot of Hallmark-centered interesting-ness throughout town.  Boulevard is a more-than-acceptable beer.  Maybe he’ll inherit the ghost of Buck O’Neil or Frank White.  To me, this trade epitomizes the Midwest: it’s sad, but can be vastly productive.  I’m bummed that Yuniesky’s now no longer a Mariner, glad that the Mariners were able to salvage something from his corpse of a career, and strongly considering making the 5-hour drive to see Yuni in KC later this month.

Goodbye, sweet motorbike.  Let it go.

If any Royals fans would like to continue this blog in perpetuity, leave a comment.

But fate is just.  Perhaps Yuni knew karma was with him when he hit a grounder at Inge near third base, forcing the utilityman to make a dreadful throw home.  Knowingly or not, Yuni’s choice of forcing Inge’s folly over actually earning a hit payed off–Inge, once again, proved to be the foolish villain.

M’s win!

He does make good contact.  Selected highlights:

Yuniesky Betancourt knew what he needed to do… Kill the ball.

…

Yeah, Betancourt killed the ball. He killed it to perfection.

Kill the ball?… Kill it.

…

“That was a fantastic bunt.”

Yep, it was pretty great.  Also in the article: apparently Endy Chavez is taking the place of Miguel Cairo and Carlos Garcia as the Yuni-whisperer, which translates into ball-killing.

Yuniesky Betancourt is generally overrated on both sides of the ball. He is also fat and lazy.

Hey, anonymous vandal from Portland, first off, you’re city has nice transit, bridges and (I’m told) doughnuts.  Second, watch this.  Yuni is apparently trying to bunt.  Sure, he took a double take, needing to make sure he actually did what Wakamatsu wanted, but he got the bunt down.  On that one play, he did not have the poorest execution of all; Scot(t) Shields did. Yuni’s off to a good start–he’ll keep his spot in the lineup (last!) for a while.

To celebrate Yuni’s positive contribution, another wiki-vandal:

When he was only 7 years old he entered a pig into the Kentucky Derby and got first place.

I like the creativity–though it feels like a tired meme–but it’s entirely misplaced.  Besides the complete geographic inaccuracy (horses can’t get to islands like Cuba, Cubans can get to places like Kentucky), it just doesn’t seem like something Yuni would even like doing.

Surprisingly, the old story of Yuni arriving in Mexico on a raft is still on his biography.  It’s not what happened, though.

Side note: Backup shortstop Ronny Cedeno has a longer Wikipedia entry than Yuni.  I’ll have to fix that the next time I need to procrastinate.

It dawned on me last week that I haven’t seen Yuniesky play since last August (I moved out of state, and the Mariners don’t get on Comcast Sports Midwest very often). It’ll be really fun to watch him play again. He’s not a great player, nor even an average player, but for whatever reason he’s the one Mariner right now that I key in on. Especially when going to games at Safeco, it’s fulfilling to have that purpose of hawking one player, all game. Yuni usually does something great, funny, or depressing whenever I watch. A lot of people feel this way about Ichiro or Felix (which is probably more sensible), but that’s Yuni.
On the flip side, if Yuni crashes and burns, it’ll be nice to find a new favorite player.

It was the only comment even mentioning Yuni.  People aren’t excited about him this season.  At all.  They’re barely even trying to tolerate the apparently below-average shortstop.  From Larry LaRue, TNT:

When Yuniesky Betancourt was caught trying to steal third on Monday, manager Don Wakamatu wasn’t unhappy. “Yuni was trying to do what we’ve been working on, getting the jump off second base,” he said. “Instead of taking a couple steps toward third and taking off, though, he took a couple steps toward the pitcher and then went. We’ll talk to him about that, smooth it out, but he was trying something different. I had no problem with that at all.”

I can picture that, and it makes me smile.  If anyone has video evidence of Yuni trying to steal third by walking towards the pitcher, I’d love to see it.

No, I’m taking a break because I moved from Washington state to the apparently great state of Illinois.  And I’m in grad school.

If anyone would like to take up the torch of blind devotion to a below average middle infielder, drop me a line.  I’ll be happy to hand it over to you.

When an error by the shortstop costs your team three runs and a win, it gets to the point where you wonder how much longer that team can continue to play said infielder. Yes, Yuniesky Betancourt did look like Ozzie Smith on that groundout in the seventh inning. But what can I say? 

For those of you keeping track (including manager Jim Riggleman), that’s Yuni’s second game-losing error (or GaLE) this week.

This isn’t much fun anymore.

Not even the not-missed Riche Sexson could’ve caught Yuniesky Betancourt’s ridiculously high throw to first base.  The ball ended up out of play, and let two runs score.  Since Carlos Silva was on the mound, that wasn’t the end of the damage, as the Rays added another run that sealed off their 5-3 victory on Friday.

In his post-game press interviews, it sounded like Silva wanted to destroy Yuni.  From the P-I:

“Maybe Chief (Silva’s nickname) has to come and grab somebody in his neck and pin them to the wall,” Silva said to reporters. “I’m very close to doing that, so write that down.”

I’d be scared if I was Yuni.  Carlos Silva’s got approximately 6 inches and 500 pounds on Yuni (at least by the look of him.)  Plus, referring to yourself in the third person (albeit, in a nickname) is merely aggravating if you’re a designer on Project Runway, but fairly menacing if you’re a large, depressed Venezuelan man.  Yuni should watch his neck.

The second-most depressing part of Friday’s game was at its conclusion.  Down by two runs with two out in the bottom of the ninth, Yuni’s ninth spot in the line up was due up.  But who stepped up to the plate?  Willie Bloomquist.  I got out of my bleacher seat and left.  I did see Willie’s swinging strikeout, but I watched it from the first-floor concourse at Safeco Field.  That way, I had a head start on the rest of the crowd filing out after the M’s loss.

This season’s been one disaster after another, for Yuni and his team.

[He was] just awful.  Yuni didn’t hit, didn’t walk, and didn’t help his team at all.  He didn’t even play that much.

Aside from “didn’t walk,” those grievances apply to Yuni’s play in july, only moreso.  Here are the grisly stats:

.207/.233/.244 (slash stats-AVG/OBP/SLG), 3 2B, 5 RBI, 2 walks, 3 strikeouts, 1 SB, .213 BABIP, -1 WPA, -0.05 Clutch

Ouch.  It’s hard to even write about how bad Yuni’s been.  He was even benched in favor of Willie Bloomquist toward the end of the month.  I thought Yuni would hit close to .300 this season, but instead he can’t even keep his job.  Newspaper writers and the Mariners’ broadcast announcers have started pointing out Yuni’s terrible plate discipline and inability to hit this season.  As I point out every month, Yuni’s offense is completely driven by his batting average on balls in play.  In July, it was .213.  That’s awful.

Here are his defensive stats (which do include some of August):

17 errors, .965 fielding percentage, .823 RZR, 18 OOZ

That’s a lot of errors (9 in the past 5 weeks), yet according to The Hardball Times, Yuni’s having his best defensive season since his rookie year.  That’s something I guess.

Aside from his slight uptick in walks and apparently decent defense, the only good news from July is that Yuni wasn’t traded by the Mariners.  (The way he played, no one would give up anything for him.)  At least he’ll still have his bobblehead giveaway tomorrow night.  My apologies in advance to anyone in the left field bleachers that wants to enjoy the game peacefully.

He’s been a bit too frustrating this year (his OPS+ is a career low), but Yuni’s still an exciting young player, that I usually enjoy watching.  I hope he lasts at least another three years with the M’s.

Go get ‘em, Rikimbili!

Always keep the ball in front of you!

That play didn’t work out so well for Yuni. Peralta was safe at first. Yuni quickly rebounded, and made an awesome throw to ensure Peralta and Shin Soo Choo were doubled up on Choo’s weak grounder. That double play means Yuni’s error didn’t really happen and doesn’t count.
Except in statistics.

In the bottom of the second, right after Yuni gets on base without the benefit of swinging (Aaron Laffey hit his foot), Ichiro hits a ground ball to Peralta. Here’s what happens:

Turnabout!

Jhonny Peralta let that ball pass right by him, too. The Mariners went onto score 5 runs that inning, and are now PERFECT (for at least the next two hours) after the All-Star break.
If Yuni can keep making errors that inspire other shortstops to goof, I think the M’s can sustain some success.

After all:
-Yuni had a much better second half of the season last year.
-It’s exciting to know that just about every time Yuni steps up to the plate, he’ll put the ball in play. Walks are good for baseball, but aren’t that exciting. Who knows where Yuni will hit the ball? (Well, he probably won’t hit it over the fence.)
-Yuni’s exciting on the basepaths. (Exciting does include getting doubled up on routine fly balls to right field, however.)
-Yuni’s got a bobblehead giveaway in less than a month. I still maintain that this potential draw to fans (August 8th! Get your Tickets!) will prevent Yuni from being shipped off before the July 31st trading deadline.

I’ve decided to stop being optimist and stop hoping for good things to come. I’ll just accept the Mariners for the rest of the season, and try to label as much of it as I can as good or fun.

That… that… is some aggressive baserunning by Yuni.  Aggressive and foolish.  Ivan Rodriguez was catching for the Tigers, and he’s the best defensive catcher of our era.  Yuni had no business rounding that base, trying to snag third.  Still, Yuni’s driven in a run this week, which only one other Mariner can claim.

To add a bit more delicious misery to what’s been a very miserable season, earlier in the game, Yuni made an awesome defensive play in about the exact same spot he ran himself out.  In the top of the third, Yuni picked up a Carlos Guillen line drive that bounced off Adrian Beltre’s glove and gunned Guillen out at first.  To reiterate, it was awesome.

Rodriguez and Yuni share another link besides predator-prey: over the past three calendar years (so, going back to early July 2005), they’re the two worst hitters in baseball, according to FanGraphs‘s WPA.  Rodriguez is a lot worse than Yuni, though.  Even though I-Rod’s had 81 fewer at bats, he’s almost a full run worse than Yuni (and every other player in baseball).  The third worst hitter?  Jose Lopez.  Keep in mind that these stats go back to before Yuni made his major league debut with the M’s.

On a cheerier note, Replacement Level Yankee’s Blog lists a whole slew of AL shortstops who are worse than Yuni based on total offensive and defensive runs above average.  The pack includes chumps like Tony Pena, Jr., but also mildly reputable shortstops like Edgar Renteria and John McDonald.  The morale of the story is that if you find stats that depress the heck out of you, just look for other stats that make you feel better.  The cost of gas may be going up, but the price of Seattle SuperSonics’ memorabilia is at an all-time low… doesn’t that make you feel better?