Betancourt traded to the Royals...How do I feel about that?

I'm sure you've all heard by now that Yuniesky Betancourt was traded to the Kansas City Royals for two minor league pitchers. As much as I've made a point to point out Yuni's flaws I'm truly sad to see him go. There was always a hope that he could become the defensive whiz out at shortstop while possessing the above-average bat that we saw flashes of when he broke into the league in 2005.

That being said, Yuni did not perform. It seemed Don Wakamatsu tried everything to get Yuni to see it his way; talking to him, calling him out in the newspaper, benching him. Each time Yuni would fix his mistakes...for a short while, but he always regressed to the player he was before the discipline.

Good luck in KC, Yuni. Finally, WFB and YFB will be reunited again. I really do hope he can turn his career around in KC. There is just too much talent there to dismiss as wasted. We'll see what happens.

Where do the M's go from here? Well...there is a huge glaring hole at shortstop, not that the trade of Yuni made it any worse than it was before but you just can't have Ronny Cedeno as your everyday shortstop. The value of Jarrod Washburn couldn't be any higher than after his 1-hitter. I think you'll see a package deal with Washburn and another player, maybe a Wladimir Balentien to fill the hole at short. This should be an exciting 3 weeks for M's fans.

Stay tuned as I'll take a look at the players the M's got in return for Yuni. From the initial look of things Jack Z pulled off another gem.

Vargas impresses; Defense does not

Same shit story, different day, right? It's starting to become really frustrating to watch the 2009 Mariners turn close games into blow outs! It happened again last night with Jason Vargas pitching a solid 5 innings, giving up 5 hits, 1 run (on the Chris Davis homer), 2 walks and 3 strikeouts. Not too shabby for your first major league start in 2 years and frankly he exceeded all of my expectations against a dangerous Texas lineup.

I'm going to beat this defense topic into the ground yet again. Our outfield defense is amazing, our middle infield however, has become a liability. In the 7th inning of last night's game Yuni again botched another play up the middle on a ball hit by Andruw Jones. The play should have been made and the only reason he wasn't charged with an error on his off-target throw was the fact the Rangers were the home team and the bookkeeper wanted to boost Jones' average.

Let's take a look at the UZR of our two middle infielders Betancourt and Lopez courtesy of fangraphs.com. Remember, UZR is a way to measure how many runs a player contributes or gives up based on the balls they either reach or fail to get to compared to the rest of the players at that position.

Let's start with Yuni. Our shortstop has cost the Mariners -6.4 runs per game based on his defense. Shortstop, arguably the most important defensive position is not a place to be giving up 6.4 runs in 32 games. It may be time to see what Ronny Cedeno can do in the 6-hole.

Lopez, although playing not as poorly as Betancourt, has a UZR of -1.5 based on his defense. And the argument for Lopez was that he more than makes up for his lack of defense or focus with his bat. Well, looking at Jose's offensive stats you'll see he's hitting .248/.289/.360. That's a .248 average, .289 on-base percentage and a .360 slugging percentage. Not exactly setting the world on fire.

Back to defense, this means between our two starting middle infielders they have given up nearly 8 runs! It is absolutely inexcusable for a pair of professional middle infielders to give up a combined 8 runs. So, it's little wonder why when horrible defense up the middle is paired with a flailing offense we can't pull out wins in close games, or prevent close games to becoming blow-outs.

This problem has been occurring for the last three years and it's time to be addressed. How Zduriencik and Wakamatsu take care of this situation however is rather limited. You can't bench both players because the only utility infielder on the team is Cedeno. And you can't trade both of them, so the question remains, If you had to choose between keeping Yuni or Lopez, who would you keep?

The Bush Leagues Blogcast, Episode 2

We finally got our second blogcast up and ready for download. Check it out, and let us know what you think!

Special thanks to Nate Minear for producing the opening music for us.

Nick

Episode 2