How Bad is Yuniesky Betancourt?

The baseball season is nearly half over at this point, and the Milwaukee Brewers have been nothing if not disappointing.  With a 32-46 record through 78 games, the Brewers are on pace for over 90 losses and are essentially out of any playoff contention.  Clearly the pitching staff carries a big piece of the blame for this; without Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum, the Brewers' pitching staff lacks any real experience outside of Yovani Gallardo, who has had his own problems this year.  However, the Brewers' lineup has shown some success.  As I've mentioned before, I have used a combination of OBP and Slug % to create a statistic to estimate (with about a 5% margin of error) the number of runs a team of 9 of that player would create.  For example, a team with 9 Carlos Gomezes in the lineup would score approximately 6.693 runs a game.  A team with 9 Ryan Brauns would score 6.513 eq. runs and a team with 9 Jean Seguras would score about 6.414 eq. runs.  Even beyond that, the rest of the everyday starting lineup has been alright; Aramis Ramirez (5.284 eq. runs), Norichika Aoki (5.042 eq. runs), Jonathan Lucroy (4.736 eq. runs), and Rickie Weeks (4.461 eq. runs) are all above the league average for eq. runs at each position.  That leaves one player: Yuniesky Betancourt, who has started more games at first base for the Brewers this year than anyone else.  With 7 above average players in the lineup, one would think the Brewers would be on pace for fewer than 90 losses, even with a bad pitching staff.  How bad is Yuniesky Betancourt?

As of June 29, 2013, Yuniesky Betancourt is hitting for a .203/.234/.343 line, for a miserable .577 OPS.  Even more frightening is his incredibly low .234 OBP.  I always harp on this point, but a .234 OBP is exceptionally bad.  The Milwaukee Brewers have been a terrible franchise for many years, including a run from 1993 - 2004 where they had no winning seasons and a 100 loss season.  According to a report I ran from Baseball-Reference.com, there has been only one player in Milwaukee Brewers' history with over 200 plate appearances and an OBP under .240.  Currently, Betancourt has a .234 OBP and 248 plate appearances.  Betancourt is on pace for over 500 plate appearances and has an OBP below .240 when no other player in Brewers' history has ever had over 200 plate appearances and an OBP below .240.  On top of that, Betancourt is playing a position that is notoriously easy to play: first base.  Generally, a batter who plays first base hits better than a batter at any other position.

Am I right to think that Betancourt is spectacularly bad?  Is he amongst the worst hitters in the game?  To determine this, I put the hitting statistics together for every player listed as a "starter" for each team in Major League Baseball in 2013.  This is therefore a list of 265 players (8 players per team in the NL and 9 players per team in the AL).  As of right now, a team of nine Yuniesky Betancourts would score about 2.322 eq. runs per game.  That is good for 243rd of 255 players, as shown below.  Honestly, this is a little better than I expected, but it's still bad. Betancourt is highlighted in yellow since it may be hard to otherwise see where he is on the list.

One thing that pops out is that the majority of the players below him are shortstops and second basemen.  That's because those positions are generally a bit tougher to play than first base.  First base is often where a team will put their worst fielders.  The Brewers put Prince Fielder there.  Last year, the Astros and the Marlins put an aging Carlos Lee there.  The White Sox put Adam Dunn there.  However, in exchange for the bad defense, there should be some good offense.  There is only one first baseman below Yuniesky Betancourt on this list: Ike Davis.  To make things even more even, I found the average lines put together for each position this year.  Here is what they look like:

As you can see, a first baseman is expected to be worth almost 0.6 eq. runs more than a second baseman and about 1.2 eq. runs more than a shortstop.  To make everything even, then, I decided to compare each player to the average eq. runs of each position.  When doing this, the table below comes up, showing Yuniesky Betancourt is the fifth worst player when compared to the average at his position, in baseball:



He's worth about 2.635 eq. runs less than the average first baseman, and only four players are worse when compared to the average player at their position in the game.  David Adams is really only on this list because the Yankees have been bitten by a swarm of injury bugs this year.  I understand that Yuniesky Betancourt is on this list because of injuries to both Corey Hart and Mat Gamel, but the Yankees have been even less lucky.  Alex Rodriguez is out.  Kevin Youkilis started the year as the third baseman, but he's injured.  Brennan Boesch, Ben Francisco, Chris Nelson, and Alberto Gonzalez were/are also given chances, so at least the Yankees are trying to find a replacement.  The Brewers did also give a half-hearted chance to Martin Maldonado and Alex Gonzalez at first base, but Yuniesky Betancourt was their clear option after May began.  They did trade for Juan Francisco, but until a recent power surge by Francisco, Betancourt was still a part time starter.  Even now, he's still getting at bats nearly every game.

While Adams has been worse than Betancourt, there is a clear difference between Betancourt and Adams: Betancourt has had 248 plate appearances this year; Adams has had a mere 104.  Adams' sample size is still much smaller than Betancourt's, and he could turn his season into an average or at least mediocre season with a few good games.  It would take Betancourt a streak over twice as long to have the same results as a hot streak for Adams.

Jimmy Paredes has been on a bad Houston Astros team that still sees him as a semi-prospect.  He was considered at least an average prospect a few years ago, but has never seemed to have gotten it going in the Majors.  He's still only 24 years old, and with only 92 plate appearances this year (about 1/3 of Yuni's), he could still turn around this season fairly easily.  A 3 for 3 game would zoom him past Yuni on this list.  Because of the small sample sizes and ages involved, I have a very hard time considering either Jimmy Paredes or David Adams worse than Betancourt. 

The other two players below Betancourt on the list are Ike Davis and Danny Espinosa.  Both of them had reasonably good years last year, while Betancourt was dropped in the middle of last year.  As a matter of fact, here are the lines for each of the three players in each of the past three years, followed by the eq. run statistic for each of the three players over the past three years:

Danny Espinosa       .232/.305/.392     3.967 eq. runs
Ike Davis            .224/.305/.429     4.321 eq. runs
Yuniesky Betancourt  .235/.259/.376     3.028 eq. runs

While Betancourt has fallen fairly significantly this year from his three year average (about 0.7 eq. runs), it pales in comparison to Danny Espinosa (about 2.9 eq. runs) and Ike Davis (about 1.6 eq. runs).  I have been a solid defender of Rickie Weeks through his terrible start this year because I knew his past history was solid and that he could become an above average hitting second baseman.  I feel the same way about Danny Espinosa and Ike Davis.  They have a track record.  Yuniesky Betancourt has had a negative WAR (wins above replacement) stat, according to Baseball-Reference, every year since 2008.  He has no track record, whatsoever.

Therefore, I believe a reasonable case can be made that Yuniesky Betancourt will be the worst hitter in baseball who can be seen as, at least, a partial starter this year.  David Adams and Jimmy Paredes will either turn it around or not be anywhere near Betancourt in plate appearances, and Danny Espinosa and Ike Davis have a solid track record and will turn it around.

Now, this only refers to hitting ability.  An argument can be made that although Yuniesky Betancourt is one of the worst hitters in the game (at least amongst the bottom 5), he is even a worse defender.  I have made an argument in a prior post that Yuniesky Betancourt, as a shortstop, gave up about 0.8 runs per game more in 2011 than Ozzie Smith did in 1983.  Those are two extremes, to be sure.  Still, though, the difference between the best hitter in baseball, based on eq. runs (Miguel Cabrera, 10.145 eq. runs) and the worst (Danny Espinosa, 1.090 eq .runs), is about 1 run per game ((10.145 - 1.090) / 9 players per game = 1.006 runs per game more).  How does Yuni's defense at first base in 2013 compare to the rest of the league?

As I always say when trying to evaluate defense, there is no easy way to evaluate defense.  Major League Baseball does a terrible job when using errors or fielding percentage as a way to evaluate a fielder.  If you get to more balls, you'll make more errors.  Yuniesky Betancourt's problem isn't errors (he had as many errors at shortstop in 2011 as Ozzie Smith did in 1983); it's getting to a hit baseball.  He has no range as a fielder.  Therefore, I generally use a statistic called "Range Factor" to determine a fielder's ability.  Range factor is essentially Put Outs + Assists; in short, if you're a part of a play that becomes an out, your range factor improves.  At first base, this becomes tough to use as well since anytime you catch a ball to record a ground ball out, range factor improves.  A lot depends on the ability of your defense.  Still though, I'd argue that the Brewers defense has one good fielder (Jean Segura), and two mediocre ones (Aramis Ramirez, Rickie Weeks), so it averages out to being average.

Another factor to consider is how often the pitching staff gives up ground balls.  The Brewers give up ground balls at a 0.85 GB / FB rate, whereas Major League Baseball as a whole gives up ground balls at a 0.83 GB / FB.  Therefore, more balls likely come Yuni's way than average and the effect of his fielding is more felt than it would be if the team gave up, say, 0.75 GB / FB.

This year, Yuniesky Betancourt has a range factor of 8.72 per nine innings.  The league average is 9.20 per nine innings.  I'll make this an extremely conservative estimate.  I will assume the following things when determining how many runs Betancourt himself has given up on defense.  First, I will assume that he will have an average number of balls hit to him.  The team has an above average GB / FB rate, and with a struggling pitching staff, they will face more batters than average.  I will also assume that every ball that Yuni does not get to is a single.  That's definitely not a fair assumption; a ground ball down the line at first often ends up as a double or triple.  A single is generally regarded to be worth 0.57 runs.  This would indicate that Betancourt is about 0.29 runs worse than average as a defender.

Let's put all of these statistics together now.  Starting with offense, Yuniesky Betancourt is worth 2.635 eq. runs per game less than an average first baseman.  When divided by 9 (because there are 9 hitters in a lineup), that is about 0.29 runs per game in real numbers.  A team with an average first baseman can expect to score 0.29 runs more per game than a team with Yuni at first.  A team with an average first baseman can also expect to give up 0.29 runs fewer per game than a team with Yuni at first.  Therefore, on a game by game basis, Yuniesky Betancourt is worth -0.58 runs per game.  When extrapolated for 162 games, that equates to about 93.96 runs over the course of a season.  It is generally assumed that 10 runs is equivalent to a win, so a team with Yuniesky Betancourt at first base can expect to win about 9.4 games fewer than a team with an average first baseman.

He's bad, folks.  Really bad.  Probably the worst batter in the league and almost certainly the worst player with over 200 plate appearances this year.  And he's starting at first base.  That's bad.