Archive for Rafael Betancourt

There have been two players named Betancourt throughout the course of major-league history, and it just so happens that both of them are current. Far more has been written about Yuniesky Betancourt than Rafael Betancourt, even though Rafael has been around longer, and even though Yuniesky is terrible. But then, that’s kind of the reason. Yuniesky wasn’t supposed to be terrible, but he became terrible, famously terrible, and he kept getting jobs. Rafael is a reliever who has been quietly effective for relatively unpopular teams for the better part of a decade. It never didn’t make sense that more should be written about Yuniesky. But some should be written about Rafael, because it turns out he’s more interesting than you probably thought.

Full disclosure: I’m obsessed to a minor degree with Rafael Betancourt. I find him to be absolutely fascinating for reasons that might not appeal to the average baseball fan. There’s something particular about the way that Betancourt goes to work. He hasn’t hit a batter since his rookie season way back in 2003, many hundreds of appearances ago. That’s crazy, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. But that’s a symptom. It’s not that Betancourt tries not to hit batters; it’s that he pitches in such a way that hit batsmen are almost impossible. Especially, specifically, against lefties.

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The Cleveland Indians organization continued its dismantling of the disappointing 2009 squad by shipping veteran reliever Rafael Betancourt to the Colorado Rockies for minor league pitcher Connor Graham. The Indians’ bullpen has received a huge face-lift since the beginning of the season; new faces include Chris Perez, Jose Veras, Winston Abreu, and Mike Gosling. The club has shed numerous veteran pitchers like Matt Herges, Luis Vizcaino, Vinnie Chulk, and Betancourt.

Betancourt, 34, spent parts of seven seasons in the Majors with Cleveland and was a reliable mainstay in the bullpen for six. He was originally signed by the Boston Red Sox in 1993 and even spent a little bit of time in Japan. The Indians signed him as a minor league free agent in 2003. On the final year of a two-year contract (with a $5.4 million option for 2010) that was paying him $3.4 million, Betancourt was poised to enter the free agent market at season’s end.

It was a good time for Cleveland to shed Betancourt (and it allows him to enter a playoff race). The right-hander was having a respectable season, but his workload was down a bit as he began to show signs of fragility. His control was also slipping as his walk rate went from ranging between 1.02-2.43 BB/9 during his prime years to 3.17 in ’08 and 4.40 in ’09. Betancourt’s strikeout rate, though, remained strong at 9.39 K/9 and he was allowing fewer than one hit per nine innings. His 30.9 GB% should make things interesting in Colorado.

The Indians organization has certainly seen a jump in the quality of its minor-league arms (T.J. House, Hector Rondon, Alexander Perez, Jeanmar Gomez) and the addition of Graham adds another promising power arm to the system. Graham at 6’6” 235 lbs is a behemoth with a low-to-mid-90s fastball and good slider. He was a reliever at the University of Miami (Ohio), but he’s been getting added pitching experience by working out of the starting rotation in pro ball. Most scouts believe, though, that his MLB future lies back in the bullpen, where he could develop into a set-up man or closer.

This season in high-A ball, Graham allowed 68 hits in 80.1 innings, while posting a walk rate of 4.59 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 9.75 K/9. It’s his control that will dictate whether or not he gets handed the ball in the ninth inning. He’s done a nice job of keeping the ball in the park in his career, and he allowed just two homers this season in Modesto.

If Cleveland wants a return on its investment sooner rather than later, it will assign Graham to double-A and shifted him to the bullpen. If that were to occur, he could be ready for the Majors by mid-2010. He turns 24 in December, so there is no reason to keep the kid gloves on.

All things considered, it’s a smart move by both organizations.

The DL bound Joe Borowski has apparently had soreness in his right triceps that the Indians staff decided to let him pitch through for weeks. I guess that helps explain his 18.00 ERA and super slow fastball.

Despite leading the AL with 45 saves last year, he also led it in blown saves with 8 and his ERA of 5.04 was by far the highest of any closer last year. He did have pretty decent peripherals though, with a K/9 of nearly 8 and a BB/9 of 2.33. His season was mainly marred by an extremely high .348 BABIP and a pretty sub par LOB% of 68.4%. Typically both of these will regress toward the league averages in following years.

The main problem with Borowski is that he’s a bit of an extreme fly ball pitcher and will be prone to giving up home runs. Last year he allowed 9, which was just 4 home runs shy of Al Reyes‘ reliever leading 13.

So the question is, if Borowski is out for an extended period of time, who will get his job?

Rafael Betancourt is the obvious choice. He had a gaudy K/BB of nearly 9 last year, and a 1.47 ERA in 79+ innings of work. He also entered games in high leverage, non-save situations last season with a gmLI of 1.78. Borowski entered games in slightly higher leverage situations with a gmLI of 1.94. Even though he has an ERA over 5 this year, his strikeouts and walks are almost identical to last year, so there’s probably not much to worry about.

Rafael Perez had nearly as great a season as Betancourt did in 2007. He struck out over a batter an inning and had a BB/9 of just 2.23, which led him to a career low 1.78 ERA. This year his ERA is over 8 and he’s allowed a few more walks then he should. But, he’s only pitched 4 innings this year and allowed his only 4 earned runs in one of his appearances so definitely take those numbers with a grain of salt.

Masa Kobayashi has had a solid season so far with a with a 2.08 ERA and 3 strikeouts and 1 walk in 4+ innings. He amassed over 200 saves in Japan, and technically has more career saves than anyone on the Indians. Kaz Sasaki and Takashi Saito had zero problems stepping right into the closer roles when they first arrived in the majors.

Finally, there’s Jensen Lewis who last year had a 34/10 strikeout to walk ratio in 29 innings pitched with a 2.15 ERA. This year, it appears to be more of that same excellence, though his K/9 is down to 8 from 10, but small sample size and all that….

Here’s how they’ve been utilized this year so far, according to gmLI:

Joe Borowski – 1.86
Jensen Lewis – 1.61
Rafael Perez – 1.48
Rafael Betancourt – 1.27
Masa Kobayashi – 0.23

Borowski should have the highest gmLI as the closer and does. Oddly enough, Jensen and Perez have entered the game in higher leverage situations than Betancourt has, despite his reputation as a fire putter-outer. Kobayashi is clearly not used in confidence, but there are only so many high leverage situations and he just hasn’t had the opportunity with such an overall excellent bullpen.

Judging from tonight’s game, Betancourt was being “saved” to close out the game and was not utilized in a tie game in the 8th. Nor was he used in the 7th with the Indians up 2-1 and the Red Sox threatening with a man on 1st and 2nd.

So for the moment, it looks like Betancourt is going to get to close out games, but the Indians have a pretty stellar bullpen and I think if needed any of these guys could handle the closer job.

When Borowski comes back and if he’s healthy, chances are he’ll be given a shot to reclaim his role as closer. And while he’s not as bad as he’s often made out to be, he really is one of the worst options in what appears to be a very stacked Indians bullpen.