Assorted Thoughts About Yuniesky Betancourt

Based on what, exactly, Ron? Leading the anemic Royals in RBIs one season?

they have to be gentle with him so that he doesn’t get butt-hurt and defensive when they try to tell him how to play the game he’s being paid millions for is ridiculous.

he can flip the ball behind his back to start a double play! And Rock and BA both say his defense has been excellent, and they certainly know more than your fancy statistics!

sigh.

The black hole of suck is pretty big. Good thing our pitchers can hit.

but I don’t really see the point of the post. Is it to point out that he’s truly as terrible as he seems? As the president, secretary and treasury of the Yuni Hater Club, I guess I already knew the guy is a questionable minor league contract signing, let alone a major league starter. Melvin eff’ed this up big time, because there were other guys available in free agency that wouldn’t have been good, but they wouldn’t be historically bad either.

I’ve come to accept that RR isn’t defending Yuni. He simply can’t throw one of his guys under the bus when there are absolutely no day-to-day alternatives. Read the quote closely. The only positive thing he said was the general, “he’s a pretty good offensive player.” Yet in the same interview he specifically points to Gomez as having a .342 OBP. RR knows his stats so he know Betancourt is a worthless pile of dung.

Craig Counsell isn’t a viable alternative right now, because he’s currently the only back up they have for 2nd, 3rd or SS. Roenicke can’t afford to play him, because he might need those creaky legs to take over a 15-day DL stint for one of the position players during a stretch later in the season.

Maysonet is the only player in the entire Brewers system that has major league experience at SS, but given his lack of any power, he might be no better than Betancourt (as bad as Yuni is, even I think he’s underperforming his “skill” level so far). If they felt they needed another backup infielder, Maysonet would’ve been called up over Rivera anyway.

for this wound is the knowledge that Escobar has been terrible at the plate as well. If the only downside to that swap ends up being Yuni’s worse defense, and we get 2 years of Grienke out of it, it doesn’t hurt that badly.

Second spot – Hart, Corey! Millions of people long for this lineup every day! This is the kind of spontaneous managing that makes teams! Things are going to start happening to the Brewers now…

rotting away in AAA somewhere who’s at least replacement level.

Braun’s natural position is shortstop. He said it. It must be true. Move him to SS, bring up Gamel to play LF (or RF and move Hart over). Your batting order would be:

Weeks
Hart
Braun
Fielder
McGehee
Gamel
Lucroy
Gomez
P

Final regular season record: 120-42

All shall love the Brewers and despair.

FA shortstops (via MLBtraderumors)

Bobby Crosby (31)
Cristian Guzman (33)
Julio Lugo (35)
Josh Wilson (30)

Does it become Guzmen?

I’m a fan of RR, but would suggest a different line than “Give Yuni some time.” It’s not like we can pause Prince Fielder’s FA clock while Yuni figures out how to hit .250.

Until we get a couple seasons of analysis of FieldFx data under out belts we are using absolutely terrible metrics to try and measure fielding performance. Hitting statistics are using an absolute measure: Regardless of the field, weather, opponent, time of day, etc., you are ultimately measuring a player’s ability to hit a ball thrown through the same rectangle. Pitching statistics are inversely equal, measuring the ability for a pitcher to overcome that hitting performance.

Fielding is not measured anywhere nearly as accurately. There are two major ways that people currently try to evaluate fielders: How many balls they get to, and how well they handle the balls they get to. One is subjective (range factor), the other is absolute (errors). Range factor is determined by the number of outs a shortshop participates in for every 9 innings played. An error is a ball that was within a player’s range to handle – a chance – and was fielded incorrectly, resulting in at least one base for the opposing team that should have been converted into an out.

A mistake on a ball fielded is always more destructive than the theoretical existence of a ball that should have been fielded. If a shortshop fails to field a ball, the result is almost always (it’s hard to picture how anything else could possibly happen) a single to left field. That’s it. But if a shortstop commits an error on a fielded ball, the result could be anything from a batter reaching safely to the ball ending up in the stands (hello Gary Sheffield). But for the purposes of comparison we’ll treat a missed grounder (1.0 RF) the same as a misfielded one (error).

Let’s take a good fielding shortstop and compare him to Yuni right now. Troy Tulowitzki is supposed to be really good. Right now, Troy has a range factor of 5.00 and has committed two errors. Yuni on the other hand has a range factor of 4.18 and has also committed two errors. So comparing these two – what might be close to the best and worst shortstops in the NL – is 0.82 range factor. That means that people theorize that playing Yuni in the field instead of Troy will result in almost a whole extra base achieved by the opposition every game.

An advantage of .82 hits every game is pretty big. Instead of a team hittng .250, they would hit .267 against us. But we’re comparing against a human vaccuum cleaner, right? The league average for shortstop is a range factor of 4.41, not 5.00. The difference there between Yuni and average is .23. That would mean that a team that normally bats .250 would only improve to .255. That’s a 5 point increase in batting average.

If we decide to ignore that errors can be more destructive than unfielded balls that turn into singles into left field and treat them equally, it pretty much means that a range factor of 1.00 is equivalent to one error a game. So if you’ve committed say, 9 errors at shortstop in 36 games played (like St. Louis Ryan Theriot), that’s an increase over Yuni of .194 errors a game, or an equivalent range factor of .19. Ryan’s actual RF is 4.45, so subtracting .19 gives you 4.26, which is still slightly better than Yuni’s. Thankfully, Theriot’s OPS is .688, much better than Yuni’s .574, so he doesn’t need to worry about being close to the worst shortstop in baseball. Yuni does though.

I started writing this trying to dampen the criticism of Yuni somewhat, but the numbers just don’t support it. He’s pretty terrible compared to his peers. His combination of bad hitting and poor fielding makes him rock bottom, and the team should try to replace him in the lineup and in the field.