All Things Yuni

[adambr2]

I actually think Weeks could be in serious danger of losing significant playing time if he does not get it together in May.

 

Think of it this way. Suppose Yuni's new approach really is the key, and he continues to hit well in May. It's going to be hard to justify keeping him out of the lineup at that point, but you definitely can't justify playing him over Hart, Segura, or Ramirez.

 

So Weeks would be the logical man out. Unlike last year with no other in-house options, the Brewers aren't likely to have the same kind of patience with Weeks while he hits .160 in the first half again, particularly if they are competitive. Better yet, Betancourt played mostly 2B last year with the Royals. I don't know how good he is defensively over there, but he wouldn't exactly be replacing a gold glover.

 

Getting benched for Yuniesky Betancourt would be the ultimate fall from grace for any player. Weeks had better get it together soon. He's well beyond the point of getting excused on the "talent" card, particularly with his performance last year. He's an 8 year veteran who's numbers have been spiraling in the wrong direction for well over a year now.

[splitterpfj]

Adam, that's still a long ways off, but if Yuni is still playing well in a month, and Weeks still isn't, I'm quite certain you'll see Yuni get some time at second base after Hart's return.

 

Watching Weeks, both at the plate and in the field, I wonder if he needs to see an optometrist. It's not like no one would have thought of that, but he looks like he can't pick up the ball. If that was just at the plate I'd figure he just "Isn't see the ball well", but it looks the same to me in the field, like he literally isn't seeing the ball well.

[Daubs]

Better yet, Betancourt played mostly 2B last year with the Royals. I don't know how good he is defensively over there, but he wouldn't exactly be replacing a gold glover.

 

I think Yuni would be a little worse in the field than Weeks. When he played SS, we saw how little range he actually has. Granted - his range might not be as much a liability at 2B, but it'd still be an issue.

 

With that said - the guy rarely botches plays that are hit within his range.

[RobDeer 45]

First off, I had no idea YB was only 31 (I believe they said that during the game yesterday). I thought he was 33 or so.

 

Second, with that information, I actually thought, boy, we should sign him up for cheap for another year or two. HA!!! Way too early to have a thought like that creep in to my head. But with him able to play all 4 IF positions, I wouldn't mind him on our squad. Even if he goes back to the old YB batting style.

 

Third, I really can't see Weeks getting benched, but man, he should be if this keeps up (for both Weeks and YB). I do think that even with Hart and ARam back, they will probably need days off the first few weeks. Let them ease back in to playing full time. So I see quite a bit of playing time for YB until mid May or so. At that point if Weeks is still batting .175, he's got to get benched.

 

Edit - YB is 31? I thought they said he was 27 yesterday, but that might have been Vin Scully screwing up or they were talking about someone else.

[JohnBriggs12]

Yuni did hit .289 and slugged over .400 his first 2 full seasons in the majors in a pitcher's park in Seattle when he was 24-25 years old. It's not like he hasn't been blessed with the ability to hit early on or came out of nowhere like Casey McGehee.

 

Now freed of the defensive responsibilities as an everyday SS, he's swinging the bat like that again, with a little more power. As Counsell said last night, he's never going to walk (oh maybe intentionally now and then), but when he goes after the hittable stuff, he can do damage and at worst he'll make contact.

 

Weeks has been a hole in the lineup wherever he's batted. Yuni is a viable option to take playing time from him, and also give ARAM and Hart a day off now and then.

[RobDeer 45]

Good article on how the #'s read that YB is really doing nothing more than making pitchers pay for their mistakes.

 

http://disciplesofuecker.com/what-the-is-going-on-with-yuni-betancourt/10105

[danzig6767]

Good article on how the #'s read that YB is really doing nothing more than making pitchers pay for their mistakes.

 

http://disciplesofuecker.com/what-the-is-going-on-with-yuni-betancourt/10105

 

Something Weeks isn't doing. It's so frustrating watching Rickie so often stand there looking at a first or second pitch fastball right down the middle of the plate and then once behind in the count, flailing badly at a pitch out of the strike zone as he end up striking out. I can't recall seeing a one time good hitter look this lost at the plate. It's almost as if he guesses wrong on what nearly every pitch will end up being.

[adambr2]

Good article on how the #'s read that YB is really doing nothing more than making pitchers pay for their mistakes.

 

http://disciplesofuecker.com/what-the-is-going-on-with-yuni-betancourt/10105

 

Something Weeks isn't doing. It's so frustrating watching Rickie so often stand there looking at a first or second pitch fastball right down the middle of the plate and then once behind in the count, flailing badly at a pitch out of the strike zone as he end up striking out. I can't recall seeing a one time good hitter look this lost at the plate. It's almost as if he guesses wrong on what nearly every pitch will end up being.

 

Exactly. Believe me, I don't think Betancourt has become a special player suddenly. But I'd be plenty happy with Weeks if he was JUST making pitchers pay for mistakes. He'll miss dead red fastballs at times.

[monty57]

Sample size matters!

 

Weeks "horrible" 2012 ended with an OPS of .728. That is .043 points higher than Betancourt's career OPS. Yes, you heard that correctly. Given any significant sample size, at his worst, Weeks is significantly better than Betancourt.

 

Don't make rash decisions (like cutting/benching Weeks in order to give more playing time to Betancourt) because of one month's performance. Anyone who can make it to the majors can have a good month, and even great players can have a bad month. I don't think Weeks is the player he once was, and he certainly never became the player he could have been, but given a season's play, he is a better player than Betancourt.

 

I would love for the Brewers to be able to trade away Weeks' contract for something of value while finding a good, young, inexpensive player. I don't love paying Weeks his salary while letting a proven bad player like Betancourt start at 2B. We have been fortunate that Betancourt has been hot when we needed it. I hope he stays hot a while longer. This hot streak doesn't outweigh a career's worth of subpar play.

[Ennder]

Betancourt's plate discipline hasn't changed, his batted ball data hasn't really changed, the only real change in his game is his HR/FB% that I can find. That is almost never sustainable, it is just a fluke. If there was any other stat I could find that supports this I might buy him at 2B but there just isn't anything. He happened to hit a bunch of balls over the wall but nothing else has changed. Every April a few guys hit a bunch of extra HR because pitchers are hanging pitches all over the place, this year one of them happened to be Yuni.

[logan82]

He still has a sub .300 OBP. The only thing he has done so far is hit a couple more HR.

[Outlander]

He has also driven in 21 in one month. RBI tend to be ignored by many in today's baseball but he has gotten some key hits that have been a big part in them winning the last couple of weeks.

[pogokat]

Auggy mentioned in the broadcast a couple of nights ago that it seems like Yuni is just sitting back and waiting for the pitch he can drive

 

still not walking at all, but the number of "rolled over it" grounders to short has gone down

[FVBrewerFan]

Well, Auggie also said Yuni was an oustanding defensive player at SS, and his bat is just a bonus.

 

Look, if the biggest problem the Brewers have a month from now is how to get Yuni more ABs, we're in a good place. So much can happen between now and then. I just can't believe Yuni can maintain numbers close to this, but we'll see.

[gregmag]

Yuni did hit .289 and slugged over .400 his first 2 full seasons in the majors in a pitcher's park in Seattle when he was 24-25 years old. It's not like he hasn't been blessed with the ability to hit early on or came out of nowhere like Casey McGehee.

 

Now freed of the defensive responsibilities as an everyday SS, he's swinging the bat like that again, with a little more power. As Counsell said last night, he's never going to walk (oh maybe intentionally now and then), but when he goes after the hittable stuff, he can do damage and at worst he'll make contact.

 

Weeks has been a hole in the lineup wherever he's batted. Yuni is a viable option to take playing time from him, and also give ARAM and Hart a day off now and then.

 

You've been Yuni's staunchest defender, and I've been maybe his harshest critic (tied with maybe 100 other people), so I think you well deserve this moment of vindication. Yuni has provided reasonable corner IF production for very little money. He has exceeded expectations, and he has helped the team. Nobody could reasonably ask any more of him.

 

All of that said, I'll be very surprised if much of anything in your post above turns out to be right. I agree, and I think most people do, that Yuni was a good MLB player at 24-25. But you're arguing that, six years later, we should completely ignore the subsequent, world-historically terrible career of a man who frequently puts up just this sort of short power binge and, instead, assume that the simple effect of not having to play ss has shaved six years off his age curve. That makes no sense to me. I really hope you're right, though.

[lcbj68c]

I heard Melvin talking on the FSWI broadcast tonight that Yuni B is taking to the task of learning English so he can better communicate with his coaches and players. Really? Seemingly 8+ years of playing baseball in an dominantly English speaking country and just now he decides to learn the language? To each his own, but if I knew I was going to spend years working in China, for damn sure I'd take to task in learning Chinese (I realize there are other primary languages spoken in China) so that I could communicate with my colleagues. I found this quite comical to learn.

[DocLuna7]

I heard Melvin talking on the FSWI broadcast tonight that Yuni B is taking to the task of learning English so he can better communicate with his coaches and players. Really? Seemingly 8+ years of playing baseball in an dominantly English speaking country and just now he decides to learn the language? To each his own, but if I knew I was going to spend years working in China, for damn sure I'd take to task in learning Chinese (I realize there are other primary languages spoken in China) so that I could communicate with my colleagues. I found this quite comical to learn.

 

Adam McCalvy did a piece on this today as well.

[JohnBriggs12]

I heard Melvin talking on the FSWI broadcast tonight that Yuni B is taking to the task of learning English so he can better communicate with his coaches and players. Really? Seemingly 8+ years of playing baseball in an dominantly English speaking country and just now he decides to learn the language? To each his own, but if I knew I was going to spend years working in China, for damn sure I'd take to task in learning Chinese (I realize there are other primary languages spoken in China) so that I could communicate with my colleagues. I found this quite comical to learn.

 

Can't we stick to baseball discussion? What difference does it make? He gets along fine with his teammates. I'm sure it was culture shock coming here and his focus was on making it as a player. Spanish is widely spoken in clubhouses so it's not like he couldn't communicate. Proves my point though that some anti Yuni stuff has nothing to do with his ability.

[hawing]

Just pause and think for a moment: Yuni leads the Brewers in HR and is tied for the RBI lead - and while it's not late in the season, neither is the season barely out of the gate.

 

This doesn't prove he's put it all together, but dang if Yuni hasn't managed to decently step up at a time he's needed. Kudos, man.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

I heard Melvin talking on the FSWI broadcast tonight that Yuni B is taking to the task of learning English so he can better communicate with his coaches and players. Really? Seemingly 8+ years of playing baseball in an dominantly English speaking country and just now he decides to learn the language? To each his own, but if I knew I was going to spend years working in China, for damn sure I'd take to task in learning Chinese (I realize there are other primary languages spoken in China) so that I could communicate with my colleagues. I found this quite comical to learn.

 

 

I had a 30 second conversation with Yuni on Monday at a signing and he spoke English very well. For that instance it didn't dawn on me that he spoke Spanish until he said something to one of his posse.

[lcbj68c]

 

Can't we stick to baseball discussion? What difference does it make? He gets along fine with his teammates. I'm sure it was culture shock coming here and his focus was on making it as a player. Spanish is widely spoken in clubhouses so it's not like he couldn't communicate. Proves my point though that some anti Yuni stuff has nothing to do with his ability.

 

 

Oh, I'm not anti Yuni in the slightest and it is a baseball discussion. I was shocked to learn as much time as he spent here and as much as he invested in being here to play baseball that he hadn't invested one bit in learning the English language. You supported the baseball discussion by taking it the direction I wanted it to go...that being his presence in the clubhouse. Unfortunately, his ability to communicate in baseball goes beyond the clubhouse. It extends to the media, to front office personnel, to umpires, etc. I'm not bashing Yuni for not doing so sooner, I'm just shocked. The same as I would be shocked if Aoki wasn't making an effort to learn the English language. Are there others in baseball speaking Asian languages? absolutely. Learning English can be nothing but positive. Again, if I was blessed with knowing I was going to play baseball in Japan for however long they'd have me, damn sure I'd be learning Japanese long before I left.

[RockCoCougars]

Yuni with another bomb tonight and a great bailout scoop at first. You know he's playing good when people have to resort to bashing his linguistics...

[dlk9s]

I heard he has the jimmy-legs.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I thought it was interesting that RRR in his post game presser actually did finally make mention of the fact that Yuni is still not walking, so he is actually acknowledging the fact that despite his torrid HR pace, his OBP is still a detriment to the team.

 

That being said, the Yuni-bomber has played a role that certainly no one expected in the early going. I don't expect him to keep it up, and likely he won't have to as Hart return and Weeks starts hitting sometime in June or so..........but it's been a nice surprise to have the extra power in the lineup while A-ram and Hart were out.

[JohnBriggs12]

Yuni isn't walking but for the most part he's swinging at strikes. In the AB he homered, he took two close but off the plate fastballs to get ahead 2-0, then fouled one off and homered on the next pitch. In his last AB, he got to a 3-2 count and swung at a ball in the zone and flied out.

 

When he swings, he tends to put balls in play. As long as he's swinging at pitches in the zone, and not chasing, he's likely to hit for a decent average, and with some power.