Category Archives: Wilson Betemit

MSTI.com’s 2007 In Review: Third Base

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Third base? Hoo boy, did I draw the short straw.

Oh, and just so we’re clear what we’re dealing with at this position, here:

Dodger Third Basemen, 2005-07 (3 seasons since Beltre left):hotcorner.jpg
1. Mike Edwards
2. Oscar Robles
3. Antonio Perez
4. Olmedo Saenz
5. Nori Nakamura
6. Jose Valentin
7. Willy Aybar
8. Cesar Izturis
9. Wilson Betemit
10. Bill Mueller
11. Julio Lugo
12. Ramon Martinez
13. Joel Guzman
14. Wilson Valdez
15. Tony Abreu
16. Shea Hillenbrand
17. Nomar Garciaparra
18. Andy LaRoche

These are not the All-Stars you are looking for.

Lightning round!

Nomar Garciaparra (C)
(in 159 AB as 3B: .302/.349/.447 6hr 21rbi)

2007 Recap: Vin did a really good job explaining just how bad Nomar was on the whole this year, so I won’t reiterate all of what he said. Rather, I’ll just focus on his time at 3B.. and I’m shocked to report that he wasn’t completely awful. Part of it was he was simply benefiting the club by not nomar_iymgkjnc_1.jpgblocking His Holyness Pope Loney IV anymore, but the numbers above? Not completely bad. Unfortunately for him, it was completely overshadowed by his mind-blowingly bad numbers at 1B. (I hear he was outslugged for most of the year by Juan Pierre? Vin? What?)

2008 Outlook: Gracefully walks away from the game to devote more time to his family, after fulfilling his dream of playing for his childhood team. Oh, we gave him a two year deal? Scratch that.

2008 Outlook: Opens the season as the starting 3B, hits .280/.280/.280 for 3 solid months, while Griddle keeps Andy LaRoche nailed to the bench. Misses 5 weeks with a hangnail and a yeast infection, while LaRoche crushes ball after ball. Returns to claim starting 3B job anyway. Which will at least have the silver lining of allowing me to constantly use this picture, which I love more than life itself.

Wilson Betemit (C-)
(.231/.359/.474 10hr 26rbi w/Dodgers)

2007 Recap: Oh, Meat. Things just didn’t turn out for us like we’d hoped. You are an enigma, covered in a question, wrapped in a burrito, smothered in secret sauce. Remember back in July, when we said you should be the starting 3B? (Side note: love that this blog has now been going long enough that I can reference my own posts from the past). Why did you toy with us so? First it was the 6 hits and .125 average as the starting 3B in April. Then it was the .725 SLG in May, by meat.jpgwhich point you’d lost your job to Andy LaRoche. Then there was the sudden spurt of being the world’s greatest pinch hitter (3 HR and a 1.102 OPS). All the while, you tantalized us with your quality OBP (.359), impressive power (.454 SLG), and surprisingly solid defense, while simultaneously frustrating us and infurating the common fan with your inability to keep your batting average over .230. And then you were gone; traded away for Scott Proctor, just in time to have the rest of the 3B corps get hurt and force us into watching Shea Hillenbrand for a month.

Oh, Meat. What could have been, if only you could have just gotten a few extra singles each month to appease the masses’ thirst for batting average.

2008 Outlook: Pfft, who cares. He’s a Yankee. He’s dead to us now.

Tony Abreu (B+)
(.279/.301/.404 2hr 17rbi)

2007 Recap: That’s right, Abreu actually started twice as many games at 3B as he did at 2B, thanks to the revolving door of tears at the hot corner. Remember what your thoughts were on Abreu before 2007? No, you don’t. Because you didn’t have any, until he completely dominated Spring Training. Then again, so did Larry Bigbie, and who remembers him at all? Abreu crushedph_473234.jpg the Grapefruit league with a .566 SLG (!), forcing his way into the infield picture, and might have actually made the opening day roster if not for a shoulder injury at the end of camp. You know what? He made up in May, and was actually pretty damned good, especially for a 22-year-old who wasn’t considered in our top tier of prospects and was continually jerked around in the bigs in terms of playing time and being out of position.

Sure, he was at times brutal at third base. A .947 fielding % sure isn’t good. However, I can’t even kill him too much for that, because I can’t find any record of him ever having played 3B in a professional game before 2007, just 2B and SS. At his natural position of 2B, he was excellent defensively, not making a single miscue all year – which makes him defensively somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 suns hotter than Jeff Kent.

2008 Outlook: Well, this is going to depend almost entirely on what Porn Stache decides. If he retires, I don’t neccessarily have a problem with letting Abreu and Chin-Lung Hu fight it out for 2B, knowing that either way we’ll have a fantastic young defender with a bit of offensive juice. If Kent comes back, as I assume is likely, then we’ve got ourselves a pretty damned good middle infield backup/defensive substitute.

Andy LaRoche (inc.)
(.226/.365/.312 1hr 10rbi)

2007 Recap: Only got 93 at-bats, so he just sneaks in under the “incomplete” banner here, plus he retains his rookie eligibility for next year. Sort of hard to judge Andy, I think. He was practically the starting 3B for most of May and didn’t really hit much (6 singles and 2 doubles in 38 at-bats), but he showed a remarkable patience at the plate (15 walks, getting him a ph_451188.jpgphenomenal .436 OBP). Most rookies come up eager to impress and hack away. But LaRoche’s advanced mastery of the strike zone earned him… a trip right back to Vegas until September. Where, by the way, his .988 OPS said, “what’s up.” He didn’t really hit all that much when he came back, either – as late as Sept. 19, he was hitting .193. But when the wheels finally came off the season, he actually got a real chance to play. From Sept. 20, he started all but one game the rest of the season, and you know what? Signs of improvement. 10 hits in 36 at-bats, 1st major league home run – though the strikeouts were a little worrisome. Also, “a bad back” isn’t exactly a great diagnosis for someone his age, so it’s certainly something to keep an eye out for.

I think a lot of it is Dodger fans have been unbelievably spoiled by the almost immediate success of Martin, Loney, Broxton, etc etc. So when LaRoche “struggled”, by comparison, he looked bad. 93 at-bats is really enough to judge one of our highest-rated prospects? Uh, I think not.

2008 Recap: Either A) traded as part of a deal for a real 3B; B) sitting behind Nomar or stuck back in Vegas; or C) playing every day for the Dodgers. I’ll rank my choices as C, A, me struck by lightning, me in a three-way with Mike Tyson and Secretariat, B.

Shea Hillenbrand (inc.)
(.243/.257/.343 1hr 9rbi w/Dodgers)

2007 Recap: Well, here’s an interesting one. Hillenbrand was given way too much money to sign with the Angels, and delivered so well on his contract that they flat-out cut him in June, thanks to a phenomenal 61 OPS+. He catches on with San Diego’s AAA affiliate, and was so good that they.. flat-out cut him in August. You’d think that’s the death knell for an over-30 player’s career,shea.jpg right? Not when the 2007 Dodgers are involved! Thanks to Nomar, Abreu, and LaRoche all going on the DL and Betemit getting traded to the Bronx, Hillenbrand was miraculously made the starting third baseman of a team in the middle of a pennant push. And to the surprise of no one, he was terrible! The stats quoted above are Dodgers-only, and they add up to an OPS+ of.. 52! Which can also be read as “even worse than the stats that caused the Angels to eat his contract and cut him” or “52% as good as the rest of the National League.” Seriously. He was half as good as average. Half. He played nearly every day from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1… and amusingly, got the grand total of one at-bat from Sept. 9 on.

On the other hand, if you’d told me near the end of August that the Dodgers clubhouse would devolve into selfish infighting and absurd controversy and that Shea Hillenbrand wasn’t prominently involved? Well, let’s just say I’d owe you a Coke.

2008 Outlook: 2008? I could care less if Shea Hillenbrand is running a child porn cocaine arson dogfighting ring or sailing the high seas as a pirate, as long as he’s nowhere near being employed by the Dodgers.

- Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness msti-face.jpg

Less Meat, More Proctology

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Somewhat bad news: The Blue traded Wilson Betemit to New York for RP Scott Proctor, which is exactly what had been rumored for weeks – though nearly every report said the Dodgers had turned down a straight swap as being not enough.

Fantastically good news: Matt Kemp! James Loney! Clayton Kershaw! Andy LaRoche! Chin-Lung Hu! Tony Abreu! All remain Dodger property!

Back to the trade, I consider this ‘somewhat’ bad news because, well, Scott Proctor might not be very good, while I have advocated in this space before that Wilson Betemit is severely underrated. So since I don’t feel the need to re-state why Betemit should have gotten another chance, let’s look at Proctor – who I am pre-emptively dubbing “The Proctologist”.

Drafted originally by the Dodgers and made it as far as AAA Las Vegas (does that mean we can call him another “home-grown” player? Probably not. But I might anyway) before being shipped off to New York four years ago with Bubba Crosby for Robin Ventura. He made the bigs in 2004 and holy jebus was he bad his first two seasons: ERA’s of 5.40 and 6.04. How exactly did he keep getting chances? Somehow, last year he became one of the better relievers in the AL, putting up a 3.52 ERA and a 1.19 WHIP, all while being abused by Joe Torre to the tune of 89 appearances and 102.1 IP. He’s regressed a little, with his WHIP up to 1.51, though again – Joe Torre treats him like Ike treated Tina. So the hope has to be, leaving the AL East and Torre’s twisted manipulations can only help him.

I suppose if the bottom line is, “did this trade help the team”, then I would have to say yes. Unless Proctor’s a total disaster, he improves the pen, inasmuch as he fulfills the qualities of “Not being Houlton or Hull” and much as I liked Meat, LaRoche is a better prospect at 3B. Just a little disappointed that this was all that could be gotten for Meat, is all.

So what’s the upshot here? Proctor goes into the pen and becomes, I would assume, part of the setup mix with Joe Beimel. That’d leave the club with one too many pitchers, though, so someone’s got to go. And if there’s any justice in this world, it’s going to be the corpse of Roberto Hernandez, though it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it’s Eric Hull instead. Delwyn Young has been called up to fill Betemit’s spot for the moment, until Proctor arrives, but I’d be surprised if he sticks, since LA already has enough problems finding outfield playing time.

No, I’ll tell you what needs to happen.

Andy LaRoche needs to come back to LA. And he needs to be given a shot to steal Nomar’s job. Because he is killing the ball in Vegas. A .599 SLG + .400 OBP for an .999 OPS? Er. Yes please.

Wilson Betemit Should Be Starting at 3B

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Yes, you heard me correctly. Wilson Betemit, who as recently as the first of this month was hitting a robust .190, should be the starting third baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers, right now. That’s right – even though his current .225 represents the highest its been all season, he is currently of more value to the Dodgers than former All-Star and all around folk hero Nomar Garciaparra.

There’s two main reasons for this bold statement:

1) Nomar’s been just plain awful. That’s the easy part.
2) Meat hasn’t actually been as bad as a quick glance as his batting average makes it seem. Batting average is a completely overrated statistic. This is going to be the harder part to sell to the common fan.

So first, let’s start with why Nomar shouldn’t be playing every day. (For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to include Nomar’s entire season stats, despite the fact that he piled up most of it at 1B – he’s in the 3B mix now).

Now, there’s lots of reasons and stats I could toss out here – and I will. There’s the fact that of the 12 NL third basemen with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting title, Nomar’s dead last in both SLG and OPS, and by wide margins. There’s the fact that he’s on pace for a whopping 4 HR’s this season. There’s the fact that from 2001-2006, he was consistently putting up mid-.800 OPS seasons, and has now dropped to .650. And there’s also the fact that, although he’s been adequate thus far, there was obviously a defensive concern or he wouldn’t have been moved off SS and 3B in the first place. All of those are perfectly valid reasons.

But that’s not my favorite reason to point out how awful Nomar has been this season. This is:

Juan Pierre is outslugging Nomar by 7 points.

Let me repeat that for you.

Juan Pierre, perhaps the least powerful hitter in baseball even at his peak. Juan Pierre, who is actually having a weaker season than usual – however that’s even possible – by slugging 27 points less than his career average. Juan Pierre, who has only 17 extra base hits, many of which are just singles that he runs out, and has 0 homers.

Juan Pierre is outslugging Nomar Garciaparra.

I would repeat that once more, but my brain is eating through my scalp trying to get out.

So obviously, Nomar’s not getting it done. But just as obviously, we’d need a replacement. And I say, Wilson Betemit. You might reply, “but he’s only hitting .225.” To which I would say, “batting average is monumentally overrated – but sad, isn’t it, that a guy hitting .225 is clearly a better option?” And then you might say, “but he’s only hitting .225! You can’t replace All Star Nomar Garciaparra with him!” And then I’d grab a bat and it all sort of went black from there. But when I woke up, I’d present you with the following stats:

(Remember, friends, Nomar has 178 more at-bats this season than Meat)

OBP
Nomar: .318
Betemit: .341 (6 more walks in 178 fewer at-bats)

SLG
Nomar: .332 (did I mention Juan Pierre’s slugging .339? Did I?)
Betemit: .474 (behind only Martin in Dodgers with over 100 at-bats)

OPS
Nomar: .650
Betemit: .815 (this is what they call in the business, a BIG F&*$^ING DIFFERENCE)

OPS+ (compares OPS to rest of league, 100 being average)
Nomar: 75 (massively BELOW average)
Betemit 107 (slightly ABOVE average)

VORP
Nomar: -5.0
Betemit: 4.5 (it’s almost like one is helping the team.. and one is not)

HR
Nomar: 2
Betemit: 10 (hey, it’s not like this team is in search of power, is it? Hmmmm.)

Even on defense, the underrated Betemit wins out:

Career 3B fielding %
Nomar: .939
Betemit: .955

And off the field?

Age
Nomar: 34 on July 23
Betemit: 26 on July 28 (it’s almost like one is on the downside.. and one has time to improve.. Hmmmm..)

Bouncing twin babies
Nomar: 2
Betemit: 0

Look, I don’t think Betemit is the next big thing. It’s not a great situation when he’s the upside here. If a trade can be made to upgrade the position, I’m all for it. But if we’re just staffing using internal personnel, it’s time to give Meat a shot. Nomar’s already been shifted off 1B because he stinks; now it’s time to shift him to the bench. Because lest we forget.. Juan Pierre is outslugging him.

Ow. My brain.