The Enigma that is Wilson Betemit’s Career

In Minnesota for a few weeks, I was able to catch a few post-all-star-break Twins games at Target Field recently. The ballpark is beautiful and the Twin Cities represent some of the nicest people in the country. But something else stood out during my pair of ballpark trips. Actually it was a someONE. His name is Wilson Betemit. Did you know he is the starting third-baseman for the Baltimore Orioles?

In 2006, Betemit was traded from the Braves to the Dodgers. In only his fourth year in the major leagues, Betemit was a switch-hitting third-baseman who had shown some promise. With the Dodgers, however, Betemit never reached his potential. At the age of 26, the Dodgers traded him to the Yankees for Scott Proctor (as solid a Dodgers trade as you can find recently…).

While Proctor was a workhorse for the Joe Torre-led boys in blue, Betemit never found his footing with the Yankees. He totaled only 10 home runs in a season-and-a-half of partial playing-time. Betemit moved on to play for the White Sox (20 games), Royals (141 games) and Tigers (40 games). The most plate appearances Betemit ever mustered was last season (357 plate appearances in 97 games. 8 HRs, 22 2B) with the Tigers.

His successful campaign at the age of 29 took him to the Orioles, where he has been their starting third baseman. This season, at the age of 30 (31 in November), Betemit is on-pace for his best season ever. While only hitting in the .250’s, the native of Santo Domingo already has notched 10 home runs and is on-pace to shatter the personal-best in plate appearances he set last season. And the Orioles are winning. 46-44 going into Wednesday night, they are in third place in the toughest division in baseball and don’t look like they’re going anywhere.

To summarize — Wilson Betemit is a productive member of a winning baseball team. I didn’t even realize he was in the league before last night, let alone starting on a team that may contend for a wild-card spot.

And that brings me back, Arlo Guthrie style, to what I really wanted to talk about: Juan Uribe. As I wrote previously, the guy has been associated with losing this season. The Dodgers were 39-22 when he came off the disabled list and area 10-22 since. They sat at 17 games above .500. Now they are only 5 games over .500 and 2.5 games behind the Giants Uribe helped to a World Series title only two years ago.

So I guess my question is, how much better of an option would former Dodger and under-the-radar option Wilson Betemit have been for the Dodgers this year? Betemit’s “Wins above Replacement” or WAR is a pedestrian .5 in this, Betemit’s third-best WAR season ever.  So Betemit isn’t exactly burning up the AL, but in 48 games this season, Uribe is hitting under .200 and has only hit 5 home runs total during his two season with the Dodgers — at a price of $8 million per season.

Someone tried to convince me at the beginning of the season that Uribe had value — that he had intangibles, or something. I don’t see it. I wanted him off my team at the beginning of the season and nothing has changed my mind. The sooner, the better.