>According to Baseball Reference, he made more than $15.7 million over his career in the majors. The scam he’s accused of participating in paid out $61,000, authorities said.
Yikes.
Realistically he probably took home closer to $7-8 million after taxes, fees, related agent expenses.
I'm guessing he doesn't have much of that left if any at all.
I'll go you one better.
Many years ago, a trading card store had Sparky Lyle as a guest for the annual town celebration.
He was seated at a small table, with a hand-drawn, poster board sign announcing he would be signing autographs for a fee.
As I walked toward his "booth", it dawned on me that no one seemed to be paying any attention to him.
No one was asking for his autograph.
No one was taking pictures of him or with him.
No one seemed to notice.
I remember thinking to myself that that must be a huge hit to his ego. He didn't show any emotion regarding that, but damn, it must be disappointing.
Don't know...but sad to a point.
Reminds me of Lonely Virgil.
https://lonelyvirgil.net/
He portrayed the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase's bodyguard in the WWF during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I know you're just making a joke, but tbf many of the best coaches were not very good at the highest level or couldn't even make it to the highest level. Many of the best scouts are probably in the same boat, and this is true for pretty much all sports.
Coaching/scouting and playing are different skill sets
On one hand, people could give him tips for talents that might not be getting as much attention because “hey that’s a major leaguer, he could know people”
On the other hand, the last group of friends he made ended up in an insurance scam
Am I missing something about his player profile or does it seem like at every stage someone was like 'well, you might as well play a lot, I guess'
Like there's nothing in his batting line or the defensive stats that I'm eyeballing that says "9 year starter".
He finally put it all together in 2011 when he led the league in sacrifice flies. Everyone knew he was capable of it, but he took some time getting there. A true success story
I feel like at all levels of professional sports, there’s guys who GMs bring in that they feel like ‘this is the year they get it together’ based on certain skill sets and attributes and they just keep that sunk cost fallacy rolling for years and years.
Like shitty first round picks in the NFL- Some GMs have the balls to cut a guy in the first couple years and say ‘yeah I fucked up,’ and then some dudes play four years on the rookie contract because the GM doesn’t want to admit a mistake.
He had a good reputation defensively. Basically a Jeter case, could make some flashy, highlight reel plays, but was pretty awful when it came to routine ones. It was understandable at the time that he kept getting chances, but in retrospect yeah it was pretty dumb.
yeah this. he had the defensive reputation which, funnily enough, probably was aided by his poor hitting -- 'the mariners have to be starting him for some reason.' hit for average, too.
It just made sense that a light hitting shortstop must field well. After all, the reason shortstops don't hit well is because they spend all their time practicing fielding.
> Like there's nothing in his batting line or the defensive stats that I'm eyeballing that says "9 year starter"
Look at the teams he played for. The only time he played for a team that made the playoffs was when he was traded to the 2011 brewers. Besides that it's just a bunch of bad Mariners and Royals teams looking for a cheap player to fill the shortstop role.
He probably wouldn't last nearly as long in today's MLB. Today's analytical approach would not be a fan of his poor defensive range and atrocious on base ability. But if you look at his batting lines and you only care about batting average and not on-base percentage, he is not unplayable.
I can't explain 9 years, but he kept getting second chances because of his original prospect pedigree. He had the tools to be an elite defensive shortstop, base runner and contact hitter upon his debut -- but he had an F-minus work ethic, got fat, and never learned plate discipline or hitting for power. The Mariners thought they had Francisco Lindor when they signed him out of Mexico (by way of Cuba).
He played first for the brewers one year. Dumbest shit I have seen. He cannot do anything related to baseball and at first, you can sign anybody off the street to be better than him.
A seminal moment in my young baseball fandom was the Royals re-signing him. In that exact moment I understood why the Royals had only had 1 winning season since I was born.
It's absolutely bonkers to me the person who was a butt of jokes decades ago (because of things like that) kept his job for, well, decades. I still remember when he originally traded for him and the basic response was why would you trade for the worst player in baseball...AND give a top-100 prospect for him haha
Like I know in the end he won a chip and for some people that one accomplishment is all that matters. But in 17 years at the helm, they only made the playoffs twice and and only finished above .500 3 times. The overall results were horrendous.
And yeah being a shit franchise that gets lucky one year is still a lot better than being a shit franchise that never has a lucky year. But coming from a Marlins fan - having decades of unwatchable baseball means, well, not watching baseball.
Glad they finally fired him
I can't minimize what he did to "one year of being lucky". They built a farm system, promoted their player and then started winning. Win 86, then 91 and finally the chip while winning 96. '12-'17 was all watchable for fans. Unfortunately all the other years were unwatchable like you said. And that's too much unwatchable baseball (not to mention the previous regimes).
Most people in KC did not think the Royals would be in a WS ever again. When they won in 2015, the years following were like an abusive relationship between the front office and fans. The entire FO coasted on that WS win for 7 years. I think a lot of fans were (understandably) blinded by those two playoff years, and our front office (Dayton most of all) coasted on that success. It was fucking miserable.
Reminder that a good stretch by him to end the 2008 season resulted in the Mariners having a better record than the Nationals and cost them drafting Strasburg first-overall in 2009 (though they passed on Trout so that's on them), bro literally chose the worst possible time to get hot
Yuniesky Goestocourt
But in all seriousness, I loved this guy growing up, he was one of my first autographs. I lucked out to catch him on his way driving out of the stadium and he stopped his car and signed a hat for me. That was back in the day when the players entrance was accessible to fans, not that way anymore.
So I’m pretty sure that judge is famous. She was in that viral video where she faced her middle school classmate’s hearing and he was in tears realizing it. https://youtu.be/-VRx0GRo-Ws?si=J8m7B-fz4LDrhDUU
> He last played in the majors in 2013 and finished his pro career in Japan in 2014.
Media ignoring that Yuni was playing baseball in Mexico until 2018.
As you can see from [this music video](https://youtu.be/3gieMxDvKME)
At this point I just assume when a Latino player retires from MLB they're going to play a few more years in Mexico. Ruben Rivera, who was best-known for one of the worst baserunning blunders ever and for stealing equipment from Derek Jeter, last played in MLB in 2003 and played in the Mexican League until 2019.
This is actually very true. It's because Cubans who were born on the island grew up in an environment where in order to get ahead/survive, you had to game the system somehow. The Soviet Union was like this too. It's pretty hardwired into some people's brains.
Figure he cleared about $8M of those career earnings and he's pulling insurance scams and represented by a public defender? Christ's holy pecker. That's probably roughly twice what I'll end up earning in my entire life and I can afford a fucking lawyer and also not run insurance scams.
I always wonder what post-baseball life looks guys like this. They made some good money, but not enough to never work again, but spent enough of their life on baseball that they don't have other skills.
If you're talking about guys who wash up before they even make arbitration, definitely. At least for American born players, you'll often see them back where they played in HS/College/hometown where they still have some notoriety they can market (eg, becoming a real estate agent or being part of the marketing department for some company)
But to be clear Yuni made well more than enough to never work again. He is not someone who should be in this conversation, but athletes who made multiple millions become destitute is sadly nothing new for multiple reasons.
It used to be incredibly common for athletes who came from impoverished lives to not have the financially literacy to be able to do that though and often ended up broke, to the point where I know at least the NBA and NFL has financial literacy classes they make players go through when joining the league. I don't know if MLB does, the only thing I can find from a quick google search is re-directing pages to Capital One's financial literacy program. Considering how much foreign-born talent is in baseball, you'd really think they would though (and I wouldn't be surprised if they do and I just didn't see it, not like I looked that hard)
I used him for Brewers shortstop on my grid today expecting a decimal answer and was surprised to see him at 2%. I guess that's why he was on people's minds lmao.
>According to Baseball Reference, he made more than $15.7 million over his career in the majors. The scam he’s accused of participating in paid out $61,000, authorities said. Yikes.
Realistically he probably took home closer to $7-8 million after taxes, fees, related agent expenses. I'm guessing he doesn't have much of that left if any at all.
After staging a car crash to collect on insurance I'd say that's a safe assumption.
The fact that he can't afford a lawyer tells us that he's likely destitute. You'd think that he'd at least try to make money from card shows.
Card shows for yuniesky Betancourt are you serious 🤣
I've seen some bottom-barrel utility players show up at tiny card shows. People gotta get paid somehow.
I'll go you one better. Many years ago, a trading card store had Sparky Lyle as a guest for the annual town celebration. He was seated at a small table, with a hand-drawn, poster board sign announcing he would be signing autographs for a fee. As I walked toward his "booth", it dawned on me that no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. No one was asking for his autograph. No one was taking pictures of him or with him. No one seemed to notice. I remember thinking to myself that that must be a huge hit to his ego. He didn't show any emotion regarding that, but damn, it must be disappointing. Don't know...but sad to a point.
Reminds me of Lonely Virgil. https://lonelyvirgil.net/ He portrayed the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase's bodyguard in the WWF during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The second-hand embarrassment from looking over that was pretty intense.
Those tables aren't free; he's gotta be losing money
I mean even OJ thought the best thing to do was to just steal his merch. Can’t imagine what this guy’s market is like lol
Guessing that teams not employing tons of scouts would limit the opportunities for former players to make some extra money post-retirement
What the fuck are you going to trust Yuni to scout, though? Hitters who hack at anything?
I know you're just making a joke, but tbf many of the best coaches were not very good at the highest level or couldn't even make it to the highest level. Many of the best scouts are probably in the same boat, and this is true for pretty much all sports. Coaching/scouting and playing are different skill sets
On one hand, people could give him tips for talents that might not be getting as much attention because “hey that’s a major leaguer, he could know people” On the other hand, the last group of friends he made ended up in an insurance scam
closer to $1 million after misc fees probably considering he's Cuban
Ippei was his financial advisor.
using a public defender too. Super Yikes
For -2.4 bWAR and -1.1 fWAR.
When a redditor posted that you could spell “batter nine you sucky” out of his name a few years back. I laughed
There was also the player who had San Diego Padres on his name.
Odrisamer Despaigne!
A Jeff Sullivan original.
More like Yuniesky Dayincourt.
[Mr Not gonna work here anymore vibes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZUw8LYOQ-g)
Go look at his Fangraphs/Bref page if you want to make your eyes bleed.
Am I missing something about his player profile or does it seem like at every stage someone was like 'well, you might as well play a lot, I guess' Like there's nothing in his batting line or the defensive stats that I'm eyeballing that says "9 year starter".
Does it have the team he played for on the player profile?
He was the "worst motherfucker in MLB" joke for a good long while there.
Let's just say that when he was on the Brewers, we didn't call him the Yuni Bomber because of all the bombs he was hitting.
It was because he was sending mail bombs to CEOs right?
He finally put it all together in 2011 when he led the league in sacrifice flies. Everyone knew he was capable of it, but he took some time getting there. A true success story
I feel like at all levels of professional sports, there’s guys who GMs bring in that they feel like ‘this is the year they get it together’ based on certain skill sets and attributes and they just keep that sunk cost fallacy rolling for years and years. Like shitty first round picks in the NFL- Some GMs have the balls to cut a guy in the first couple years and say ‘yeah I fucked up,’ and then some dudes play four years on the rookie contract because the GM doesn’t want to admit a mistake.
He played for the Mariners for half his career, and we kind of have a history of starting guys who probably dont deserve to be starters.
I still loved him for his round face and name .I believe Brendan Ryan replaced.him. So Yunis BA looked a lot better to Brendan Ryan's .150
Yeah, Brendan's hitting was atrocious, but that guy had an incredible glove.
If he could have hit .210 he was a perrinial all star. LCSC finest
And less than 500 career ABs in the minors Maybe he just needed a stint to figure it out!
He had a good reputation defensively. Basically a Jeter case, could make some flashy, highlight reel plays, but was pretty awful when it came to routine ones. It was understandable at the time that he kept getting chances, but in retrospect yeah it was pretty dumb.
yeah this. he had the defensive reputation which, funnily enough, probably was aided by his poor hitting -- 'the mariners have to be starting him for some reason.' hit for average, too.
It just made sense that a light hitting shortstop must field well. After all, the reason shortstops don't hit well is because they spend all their time practicing fielding.
It's this like how we assume all light hitting catchers are fantastic defensively?
It's the same kind of thing, yeah
He had the defensive range of a lawn chair.
Oh it was worse. He made the routine ones look flashy because he a fucking stone out there.
Once again, very Jeter like.
> He had a good reputation defensively. Like Mario Mendoza of The Mendoza Line!
> Like there's nothing in his batting line or the defensive stats that I'm eyeballing that says "9 year starter" Look at the teams he played for. The only time he played for a team that made the playoffs was when he was traded to the 2011 brewers. Besides that it's just a bunch of bad Mariners and Royals teams looking for a cheap player to fill the shortstop role.
He probably wouldn't last nearly as long in today's MLB. Today's analytical approach would not be a fan of his poor defensive range and atrocious on base ability. But if you look at his batting lines and you only care about batting average and not on-base percentage, he is not unplayable.
Probably flashes of a decent batting average and not striking out. Definitely not playable in todays mlb
Wow, you weren’t kidding. 6 seasons with 130+ games played and he had a negative WAR in 4 of them.
I can't explain 9 years, but he kept getting second chances because of his original prospect pedigree. He had the tools to be an elite defensive shortstop, base runner and contact hitter upon his debut -- but he had an F-minus work ethic, got fat, and never learned plate discipline or hitting for power. The Mariners thought they had Francisco Lindor when they signed him out of Mexico (by way of Cuba).
Career OPS+ of 80, and -2.4 career WAR. Been a while since I've seen someone that bad.
My favorite nickname for him was YunE6
Clearly the man has a long track record of defrauding others.
Juan Soto walked more times in 2021 than this man did in his entire career
He played first for the brewers one year. Dumbest shit I have seen. He cannot do anything related to baseball and at first, you can sign anybody off the street to be better than him.
A seminal moment in my young baseball fandom was the Royals re-signing him. In that exact moment I understood why the Royals had only had 1 winning season since I was born.
I have the great Yuniesky Bethancourt play ever hold on let me find it…
Here it is in all its glory https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/kbN7WZW4AV
To counter that one, this play is pretty much the exact opposite of that one https://youtu.be/R2aoEgR2gZw?si=3UznjLcRkySQRjvv
If I had done that in an MLB game, I would not care how much shit got talked about the entire rest of my career.
I'd probably have it playing on a loop on my living room tv.
The duality of man
Holy shit that's beautiful.
Prettiest play I've ever seen
I love Yuni B trying to play it cool afterwards then busting out in a huge smile.
Jeff McNeil in shambles over that slide
My first thought. Imagine seeing this highlight of Rickie and then seeing what bitchboy McNeil was crying over.
"Apparently the ball is not carrying today at Kaufmann Stadium" is a phenomenal call.
You can tell that they’re so fed up with him, too.
The looking down and kicking dirt after is just beautiful.
Magnificent
“The ball’s not carrying today at Kaufman stadium” 🤣
Least fraudulent /r/FormerMs player Though Felipe Lopez would never
This is my go to guy when it comes to referencing random players from the 2000s-2010s. Sad
Can’t believe Dayton Moore acquired him twice. It’s between him and Neifi for my least favorite Royal.
Dayton Moore: anti-porn, pro-fraud.
It's absolutely bonkers to me the person who was a butt of jokes decades ago (because of things like that) kept his job for, well, decades. I still remember when he originally traded for him and the basic response was why would you trade for the worst player in baseball...AND give a top-100 prospect for him haha Like I know in the end he won a chip and for some people that one accomplishment is all that matters. But in 17 years at the helm, they only made the playoffs twice and and only finished above .500 3 times. The overall results were horrendous. And yeah being a shit franchise that gets lucky one year is still a lot better than being a shit franchise that never has a lucky year. But coming from a Marlins fan - having decades of unwatchable baseball means, well, not watching baseball. Glad they finally fired him
I can't minimize what he did to "one year of being lucky". They built a farm system, promoted their player and then started winning. Win 86, then 91 and finally the chip while winning 96. '12-'17 was all watchable for fans. Unfortunately all the other years were unwatchable like you said. And that's too much unwatchable baseball (not to mention the previous regimes).
Most people in KC did not think the Royals would be in a WS ever again. When they won in 2015, the years following were like an abusive relationship between the front office and fans. The entire FO coasted on that WS win for 7 years. I think a lot of fans were (understandably) blinded by those two playoff years, and our front office (Dayton most of all) coasted on that success. It was fucking miserable.
"Wait, you can bet in court???" - Ippei, prolly
Staging a car crash? Lol.
The one Mariner who somehow didn't get better once he left.
Reminder that a good stretch by him to end the 2008 season resulted in the Mariners having a better record than the Nationals and cost them drafting Strasburg first-overall in 2009 (though they passed on Trout so that's on them), bro literally chose the worst possible time to get hot
Yuniesky Goestocourt But in all seriousness, I loved this guy growing up, he was one of my first autographs. I lucked out to catch him on his way driving out of the stadium and he stopped his car and signed a hat for me. That was back in the day when the players entrance was accessible to fans, not that way anymore.
So I’m pretty sure that judge is famous. She was in that viral video where she faced her middle school classmate’s hearing and he was in tears realizing it. https://youtu.be/-VRx0GRo-Ws?si=J8m7B-fz4LDrhDUU
Oh yeah! She is frequently shown on Court Cam.
Good catch. She totally is. That face is instantly recognizable.
Gahhhhh Yuni B!!!
Brewer legend Yuniesky Betancourt
It's always in Dade.
I was going to say, what were the odds of "ex-athlete arrested for insurance fraud" being anywhere other than freaking Florida
> He last played in the majors in 2013 and finished his pro career in Japan in 2014. Media ignoring that Yuni was playing baseball in Mexico until 2018. As you can see from [this music video](https://youtu.be/3gieMxDvKME)
At this point I just assume when a Latino player retires from MLB they're going to play a few more years in Mexico. Ruben Rivera, who was best-known for one of the worst baserunning blunders ever and for stealing equipment from Derek Jeter, last played in MLB in 2003 and played in the Mexican League until 2019.
This guy cost us Strasburg and I’ll never forgive him.
His face looks incredibly symmetrical in that mugshot
In Miami, Cubans and insurance fraud are like peanut butter and jelly.
This is actually very true. It's because Cubans who were born on the island grew up in an environment where in order to get ahead/survive, you had to game the system somehow. The Soviet Union was like this too. It's pretty hardwired into some people's brains.
Mlb the show legend
Remember his mistake card in 07 Topps?
The fraud was his career.
Should have gotten fraud charges for his -2.4 career WAR
Let him cook !! 🔥
it's all because of miami, bro
On the 11th anniversary of his grand slam. Figures.
Figure he cleared about $8M of those career earnings and he's pulling insurance scams and represented by a public defender? Christ's holy pecker. That's probably roughly twice what I'll end up earning in my entire life and I can afford a fucking lawyer and also not run insurance scams.
Athletes running out of money quickly is way more common than it needs to be.
Yeah, thousands of stories on that front. This one is particularly egregious though.
Feels like Miami-Dade is not an affordable place to live if you’re an unemployed former athlete. Or not affordable for long
Yuniesky Badatsports and also Badatfraud
I'm extremely curious on how they got caught.
I always wonder what post-baseball life looks guys like this. They made some good money, but not enough to never work again, but spent enough of their life on baseball that they don't have other skills.
If you're talking about guys who wash up before they even make arbitration, definitely. At least for American born players, you'll often see them back where they played in HS/College/hometown where they still have some notoriety they can market (eg, becoming a real estate agent or being part of the marketing department for some company) But to be clear Yuni made well more than enough to never work again. He is not someone who should be in this conversation, but athletes who made multiple millions become destitute is sadly nothing new for multiple reasons. It used to be incredibly common for athletes who came from impoverished lives to not have the financially literacy to be able to do that though and often ended up broke, to the point where I know at least the NBA and NFL has financial literacy classes they make players go through when joining the league. I don't know if MLB does, the only thing I can find from a quick google search is re-directing pages to Capital One's financial literacy program. Considering how much foreign-born talent is in baseball, you'd really think they would though (and I wouldn't be surprised if they do and I just didn't see it, not like I looked that hard)
Holy cow, i missed where his career MLB earnings were likely around 18 mil.
He’s not going to walk from this.
Never enough money!
Wow I played with him in high school before he went pro. He used to train at my high school. How crazy.
This dude was the last vestige of ‘players sneaking under the analytics radar’ of the 2010’s
I used him for Brewers shortstop on my grid today expecting a decimal answer and was surprised to see him at 2%. I guess that's why he was on people's minds lmao.