Yuniesky Betancourt has been a disaster this season, unable to hit or field or, for the life of him, take a pitch. Until two weeks ago, his batting average was higher than his on-base percentage. Then, the M’s made noise about benching him, and all of a sudden he found some patience. On Friday night, he walked twice. Ichiro homered twice that game, and Ichiro never homers. It was only the fourth mult-home-run game of Ichiro’s career. And it was only Betancourt’s fifth multi-walk game. He followed it up with another walk on Saturday. Then he made a big error on Sunday.Now, reports Geoff Baker, the M’s are looking to trade Betancourt to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Jack Wilson, who is a much better fielder than Betancourt, despite being six years his senior. (Betancourt, you may recall, looked like a hot-shot fielder when he first came up.) The M’s have promising shortstop prospect Carlos Triunfel on his way up, so Wilson’s services might not be needed for long. While it’s easy to be disappointed in Yuni, I imagine a dude who was allegedly smuggled here by a dealer, at no expense to himself, via Tijuana (with a fake Mexican passport) via the Bahamas via speedboat from Cuba and is now making $2.3 million per isn’t sweating it too hard.
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