FanPost

Yuni: The King of the Three True Outcomes

Most of us have heard of the Three True Outcomes at some point in our baseball watching. Basically the 3 outcomes are HR, BB, and K (Or pop-up to 2B, soft grounder to 1B and weak fly to right for pre-FuckingTheMan Lopez). Well there are some players who don't really like the Three True Outcomes and do eveything they can to avoid them. Craig Brown over at THT looked at 4 guys who cannot homer, walk or strike-out. He looks at Bengie Molina, Juan Pierre, Christian Guzman, and our favorite Cunab, Yuni. It's pretty interesting to see how these guys literally cannot walk, K, or go yard. But the Yuni writeup was pretty depressing.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/three-two-one-contact/

Yuniesky Betancourt: 3 HR, 4 BB, 16 SO in 236 plate appearances
True Outcome percentage: 9.7%

 

Four walks? Four?

That translates to a current walk rate of 1.7 percent. If Betancourt keeps that up, he’ll finish with the lowest walk rate since Shawon Dunston's 1.6 percent rate in 1997 playing for the Cubs and Pirates.

Since breaking into the majors in 2005 and taking a free pass in 5 percent of his plate appearances, his walk rates have declined every year.

2005: 5.0%
2006: 3.0%
2007: 2.7%
2008: 1.7%

I knew Yuni wasn't walking much, but 1.7%?? Good God.  I'm pretty sure that ~90% of LL-ers could walk in 1% of their PAs (and K the rest of the time). Someone needs to sit with Yuni and let him know that walks aren't bad and actually can help.

Currently, Betancourt is hitting .284/.294/.415 and he stands the best chance of the four at finishing below 10 percent. That is, if he can keep his job for the entire season.

I'm going to assume that is pure guesswork, but do we even have another SS capable of playing in the majors?