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.

Like the rest of the Seattle Mariners, Yuniesky Betancourt royally stunk at the beginning of May.  But thanks to hitting over .400 in the week plus, his stats for the month of May aren’t that bad.  Here they are:

.283/.290/.414 (slash stats), 7 2B, 2 HR, 10 RBI, 1 BB, 6 K, 1SB, .286 BABIP, -0.27 WPA, 0.03 Clutch

One reason for Yuni’s recent success is that he’s back to hitting ninth.  John McLaren tried to capitalize on Yuni’s early success by batting him 6th and 7th.  Yuni responded by getting three singles in 19 at-bats.  Now’s he’s back in the enviable position of hitting in front of the Mariners’ best hitter, Ichiro.

The 7 point difference in batting average and on base percentage shows that Yuni needs to walk a bit more.  After getting three walks in April, he got one in May, and that was on Friday.   The Mariners’ website posted a 15-paragraph article in the wake of that cataclysmic event.  There were a few quotes from Yuni:

“It’s just something that I’ve just grown up with,” he said. “A lot of Latin players have that. Some hitters are patient, but some are just more aggressive.”

Carlos Peña (who has a tilde in his last name, in case you speed read over that) has a higher OBP than Yuni (.328 to .303) despite having a batting average of .220.  He’s walked TWENTY NINE TIMES THIS YEAR.  And has a tilde in his last name.

“Sure, I’d like to be more patient and take a few balls and get on base more so I can help the team,” he said.

At least Yuni knows what he needs to work on.  If Yuni can keep hitting .400 for the rest of the season but walking just once a month, I think everyone would agree that it would be a successful season.

Another spot where Yuni needs work is hitting on the road.  His home/road splits so far are pretty huge.  At Safeco Field, his slash stats are .323/.337/.500, while away from the Northwest, he’s hitting just .260/.268/.344.  This difference, in less than 30 games at in each grouping, is based, like most of Yuni’s offense, on his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) which is .326 at home, and .270 on the road.  Safeco is a pitcher’s park where some of the Mariners struggle, but Yuni seems to be spraying and blooping the ball (and tucking a few over the left field fence) there a lot better.

Yuni’s fielding numbers, sadly, have really plummeted.  Here are his to-date stats:

7 errors, .970 fielding percentage, .780 RZR, 7 OOZ

These numbers are from The Hardball Times, which doesn’t break down stats by month (I think), but in May Yuni made 3 errors (not terrible), so his fielding percentage went up 2 points (this is nothing), but because he only made one out of zone (OOZ) play (ouch), his revised zone rating (RZR) dropped 43 points (baaaaad).  Right now only Julio Lugo has a worse RZR than Yuni, among shortstops.  Yep, even Derek Jeter and Hanley Ramirez, both noted defensive bumblers, rate better.  If you feel like Yuni’s diving and missing a lot more balls this year, feel good knowing that the numbers back you up.  But feel bad that Yuni’s not playing even average defense.

Consider this video:

This is Yuniesky Betancourt at Raul Ibanez’s golf tournament benefiting helping vanquish cystic fibrosis.  I’m not at all troubled by Yuni’s putting form, which can generously be described as “putt-putt-esque.”  Baseball and golf are both deceptively easy stick and ball sports but there isn’t any intrinsic crossover in talent.  (This explains why the Dominican Republic hasn’t produced any good golfers.  This does not explain why Phil Mickelson and John Daly are successful golfers with physiques that can be described as “Kruk-esque.”)

What is troubling is Yuni’s celebration at nearly making a putt.  Dave Sims’ metaphor about ladies at Bloomingdale’s (a reference people in Seattle totally get, given that the closest Bloomingdale’s is over 800 miles away) and Yuni’s full-body fleece covering allude to the low temperature, which could explain why Yuni felt the need to jump up and down.  He’s from Cuba, where it’s never cold (but it’s frequently the Cold War).  Clanging the ball off the back of the hole isn’t making the put from the edge of the green, and jumping up and down after failing isn’t how a champion behaves.  I didn’t condemn Yuni’s recent pout after being pulled for a pinch-hitter, but this display makes me question his determination.

Still, it’s funny to watch.

I went to Monday night’s game for two reasons.  First, the Red Sox were in town.  Second, Yuniesky Betancourt was in town.  Yes, the Red Sox came before Yuni.  Not because I like the Red Sox, though in a youthful indiscretion I did watch Game 1 of the 2004 World Series in a Red Sox bar, with a Red Sox girlfriend.  Also, I don’t hate the Red Sox, their bars, or their lady fans.  I just feel that it’s extremely important to root against them and protect your home field.

Red Sox games in Seattle today are what Yankees games were a few years ago (and maybe still are; I’m bored of the Yankees’ bile) and a small dose of what Blue Jays games were in the Kingdome.  Home field advantage, with crowd noise being a chief metric, is up for grabs. Because they have a tiny old (beautiful) stadium, have been successful the past few years, and have a modest diaspora (if American cities can claim diasporas), Red Sox Nation travels well and has good turnout in Seattle and everywhere else.  Example A is Juliette from Lost.  I’m a fan of that kind of fan behavior, as long as it isn’t too fair weather.  The sellouts help the Mariners’ bottom line; this team won’t sell out many non-bobblehead games the rest of this season.  And all those red and pink hats radicalize Mariners fans to actually make some noise and occasionally get out of their seat when something good or exciting happens.

I wasn’t quite up to the challenge of the 20,000+ Sox fans that infiltrated Safeco.  I’ve had a sore throat for a few days, so I was mostly limited to cheering for plays like the one Yuni made on the second pitch of the game.

I was out of my seat.  This highlight, though, is dedicated to the guy in the front row of Section 181, which is where I also sat.  With just a glance him, you’d have trouble figuring out his loyalties.  He wore a brown-on-brown argyle New York Yankees hat that’s another example of New Era’s ability to print money with any lame pattern as long a a team logo’s on it somewhere.  He also had tattoos on each elbow–the right for the Yankees, the left for the Mets.  Not off to a good start.  His jersey, though, was an orange Ichiro jersey from last year’s All-Star game in San Francisco.  The Golden Gate Bridge stood in for the “I” in “American” on the front of the jersey.

While he lacked fashion sense and integrity (three teams?), he did cause a ruckus on behalf of the Mariners.  The bottom level third base seats had a virulent strain of Red Sox Nation–they cheered Jason Varitek as he trotted out for Bartolo Colon’s pre-game warm ups.  All we $14 seat fans had in our arsenal was the guy in the front row.  He argued with the Sox fans in our section (which was probably 60-40 for the M’s) and single-handedly tried to turn every “Let’s Go Red Sox” fan into a “Let’s Go Mar-i-ners” one.

Actually, he did that double-handedly, because he pounded on the KOMO sign right in front of our seats.  That proved to be his downfall.  As the M’s mounted their comeback (aided by Yuni’s single!) in the bottom of the ninth, the Safeco Field ushers told Yankee hat that he had to leave.  A county sheriff was brought in, yet rows of fans around him chanted “Let. Him. Stay.”  When he asked the sheriff why he had to leave, he heard back “Because I said so.”  Way to go, police!  As he was escorted out onto the narrow concourse, he shouted out his last words: “tell all your friends.”

Now, my friends, you all know.

An honorable mention in fandom goes to this guy

That’s a niiiiiice jersey.  He also brought about eight poster board that spelled out RAUUUUUL that he passed out to fans in the section.  If he’d made more noise or been thrown out of the game, this post would be solely about him.

None other than this lady:

That’s Juliette from Lost.

Insta-reactions:

• She must be taking a red eye to Hawai’i to film tomorrow’s season finale.  Isn’t all TV still filmed in front of a live studio audience?
• Juliette is clearly Jack’s soulmate; they both like the Red Sox.
• Which Lost character would Yuni be?  Probably Boone or Frogurt.  Maybe Michael, because they’ve both been on speedboats.  Ichiro would be Sayid.  Miguel Cairo would probably be Bernard.
• She really came with a dude sporting a Sideshow Bob haircut?

From Larry Stone’s story on the Mariners’ dramatic 4-3 win over the Red Sox last night on a game-winning single by Jose Lopez:

Lopez survived the backslapping scrum that surrounded him, with Adrian Beltre, Yuniesky Betancourt (who had been visibly upset a few moments earlier when lifted for a pinch-hitter) and Felix Hernandez leading the pack that sprinted out to greet Lopez.

On The Seattle Times blog, Stone said Yuni led the pack to greet Lopez, but changed his tune for print.  And how’d that pinch-hitter do?

Jeremy Reed, the pinch-hitter for Betancourt, got Balentien to third with a ground out.

A productive out?  Yuni can give those; that’s one of the few ways in which he’s productive!

I think it’s good that Yuni was mad.  His job is to hit a baseball, and he should take some pride in his work, thus get upset when snubbed.  It would be worse if he was all smiles at receiving a reprieve from playing.  Plus, he turned around and got in a scrum with Lopez at the end of the game. (The ideal way to  celebrate baseball victories is by playing rugby, of course).

What Yuni should also be pissed about is his error in the 6th that let Boston tie the game up.  Edgar for Mayor summed up the inning well in a comment at USSMariner:

I can’t believe I am about to say this, but tonight you may not blame Mac for the loss. The Innings was Yuni’s fault for giving Batista an extra out to work with. Not Macs fault, Yuni’s fault.

But, for once in a week, the M’s didn’t lose, so no one needs to blame Yuni for a near-GaLE last night.  Phew.