The Yankees entered this season with the hopes that Dellin Betances and Manny Banuelos would continue to progress toward becoming starting rotation options.
Instead, Banuelos has spent much of the season on the disabled list, and Betances has regressed to the point where the team demoted him from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre to Double-A Trenton this week. Betances makes his first appearance with Trenton Saturday night against the Portland Sea Dogs.
Betances, a 6-foot-8, 260-pound right-hander who played high school ball at Grand Street Campus High School in Brooklyn, always has dealt with control issues — something pitchers his size often struggle with. But those issues have submarined his season, as Betances has walked nearly as many hitters (69) as he has struck out (71). Betances is one walk short of his total for all of last year — a career-high — in 126 ¹/₃ innings between Trenton and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
That walk total, along with allowing 71 hits in 74²/₃ innings, has inflated his WHIP to an astronomical 1.88 in 16 starts for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, to go along with a 3-5 record and 6.39 ERA.
Those numbers look even worse over his last nine starts, in which he has gone 1-3 with a 7.52 ERA and a 2.11 WHIP, striking out 43 and walking 40 in 38¹/₃ innings.
Betances hopes to get himself turned back around in Trenton, after spending parts of the past two seasons with the Thunder. Betances went 4-6 with a 3.42 ERA for Trenton last season, striking out 115 and walking 55 in 105¹/₃ innings over 21 starts before getting promoted to Scranton/Wilkes Barre for four starts at the end of the year.
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The Mets and Yankees will be well-represented in this year’s Double-A Eastern League All-Star Game in Reading, Pa. on July 11 at 7:05 p.m.
For the Mets, right-hander and top prospect Zack Wheeler, who is 7-3 with a 2.33 ERA in 13 starts, is the lone pitcher from Binghamton to make the team, and he will be joined by infielders Eric Campbell and Jefry Marte.
Trenton, meanwhile, had five players make the team: right-handers Brett Marshall and Kelvin Perez, infielder Kevin Mahoney and outfielders Abraham Almonte and Cody Johnson.