Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Yuni: Every Rose Has Its Thorn(s)

So a recent outburst of offensive production by Yuniesky Betancourt has some Royals fans laughing and pointing at us "basement dwellers". But since then, he's sunk back to regular YuniLevels.

His season stats are impressive. Sure, if you look solely at home runs and RBIs (worst stat ever for evaluating individual talent), he seems like he's a very productive player.

But if you look just below the surface of those stats...no, actually if you look just to the right of those stats, you'll see that his OBP is still well below .300, he still swings and misses at 47% of pitches out of the strikezone, and still has a negative UZR at -7. Oh and his OPS is at a strong .714, or in simpler terms, "Eleven-Points-Better-Than-Mitch-Maier". This guy is legit! SUPER LEGIT!

ERRRRRRRR. No he's not. He's still terrible. And don't tell me that I just think he's terrible because I don't "watch the games" or "listen to Ryan Lefebvre's analysis of Yuni". He's terrible. He swings at everything. Heres the messed up part: HE WOULD PROBABLY BE A DAMN GOOD PLAYER IF HE DIDN'T SWING AT EVERY DAMN PITCH!!!

The fact that he swings at so many pitches early in the count and out of the strike zone actually makes him terrible. If he wouldn't swing at those pitches, he would walk more, meaning he would get out less and help the team out more. Also, he would get better pitches to hit, his average would go up, he'd hit for more power and...dare I say it? Or will I get banished back to my mother's basement? HE WOULD WALK MORE.

He's not a good player. He's having an ok season. THAT'S IT. This year doesn't warrant an extension or whatever. Don't fool yourself. On Fescoe's show yesterday, Bob asked George Brett about Betancourt and George started talking about Wilson Betemit. I think that was George's polite way of saying, "I would rather s**t my pants at the Bellagio again than talk about Yuni."

He's a serviceable stopgap for the time being. But don't fool yourself into thinking that he's the future of this team. He's here through next year or until Christian Colon comes up. THAT'S IT.

3 comments:

  1. Hey
    Can we not just fast forward to 2012? Next year looks like a lot of the same people that are not part of the future but are just stop gaps. I am tired of seeing Kendall playing all the time and batting in the 2 hole, tired of Yuni and him swinging at balls over is head and wondering if he is actually going to field a groundball, tired of Betemit even though he is having a decent year, he is not our future 3b. I hope they call up all sorts of young guys in Sept and play them everyday, but they won't...c'mon 2012...

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  2. It should be said that Yuni makes some very easy plays look really difficult and for that he gets lots of cheers. Most shortstops make the plays he can't and still they are easy for them, Yuni is not a good SS, he is just a gap filler. I hope he is not there until Colon comes along because that guy can make throwing errors even when he doesn't have the ball. Ugh.

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  3. I'm probably a series too late... Bue I love when I hear people DOG Yuni... I follow the Robert Ford school of thought... If you want to ahte Yuni for being Yuni, you better hate Mike Aviles for being Yuni with even less power...

    It's true, KC fans love Mike Aviles, but hate Yuni... ask me, I'll take the Royals HR leader (We know Guillen is still the HR leader) over a maybe-a-singles-hitter any day...

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