Two stories about Ronny Cedeño

In January 2006, Baseball America claimed that their #3 Chicago Cubs prospect, Ronny Cedeño, “has proven that he can be more than just a glove man. His strong hands and wrists give him good bat speed that should allow him to hit for average and maybe 15 homers per year.” He was, in other words, in line with a chance to be a pretty good Major League Baseball player.

This chance did not pan out. But it also didn’t not pan out. Instead, Cedeño operated in what is perhaps baseball’s most mystifying sphere: the long-term extremely bad utility player. Between his Major League debut in 2005 and his final game nine years later, Cedeño amassed 2,792 plate appearances, hitting .245/.289/.353 — he almost never walked — and was in the field for more 5,319 innings. That is a LOT of baseball for someone who basically couldn’t play it at that level.

It’s difficult to be a good MLB player, but it’s vastly more difficult to be just good enough to stick around on a roster for nine years without ever making a significant contribution. Not only do you have to operate at an enormously consistent (albeit pretty miserable) level for years, you have to ensure you find yourself in situations where actually good players aren’t threatening to displace your cozy spot in the baseball universe. Thanks to a combination of talent and luck, Cedeño inhabited a Goldilocks zone of public mediocrity.

So what? Baseball has had plenty of bad long-term utility dudes, and we only write articles about some of them. But I have in my possession two stories about Ronny Cedeño, and I want to tell them. So here goes. (Neither of the stories are the fact that I imagine him singing his name like Jason DeRulo does. That’s a fun extra, just for you.)

The first story takes place on April 20th, 2007. The Cubs are hosting the St. Louis Cardinals, and Cedeño began the game on his natural habitat: the bench. But now it’s the ninth inning, and the Cardinals are 2-1 up, and Mark DeRosa has just hit a single. A speedy pinch-runner could put pressure on the defense and help spark a rally. Cubs manager Lou Piniella decides that Cedeño is his man.

So ... look. Plenty of pinch-runners have been thrown out stealing second. Being aggressive on the basepaths carries a degree of risk, and sometimes it doesn’t work out. But there are outs, and there are outs, and as I hope you have gathered, the Cedeño’s subsequent escapade falls into bucket number two.

If you’re not intimately familiar with the rules of baseball, let me give you a little primer. If the batter walks, they’re sent to first base, automatically pushing any runners to the next free base. If you happen to be on first base and the batter behind you draws a free pass, for you can moonwalk to second or slither like a snake for all the rules care. It should therefore be something like impossible to get caught stealing second base during a walk. As it turns out, it’s not quite impossible.

Jacques Jones is at the plate and has worked the count full against Jason Isringhausen, which is the most mid-00s baseball sentence I have typed in absolutely ages. On the sixth pitch of the at-bat, Cedeño breaks for second base. As it turns out, he breaks a little too hard.

Cedeño slides into second base, met by a reflexive throw from Yadier Molina. It does not matter, of course, whether the throw beats Cedeño to the bag or not — he is protected by the iron Law of the game, and he’ll be awarded second base whether Molina nails him or no. But that protection only applies once.

If, say, in your enthusiasm to reach scoring position, you overslide and are tagged after falling off the base, the aegis vanishes, and you’re left in the humiliating position of trudging back to the dugout, thrown out stealing second during a walk. This, of course, is what happened to Ronny Cedeño on April 20th, 2007.

I don’t know why I was watching this game, but I was, and I distinctly remember the Cubs announcers claiming that this had also happened to Cedeño in Spring Training earlier that year. Making that sort of impossible error once is funny; doing it twice becomes a brand. I decided that a player with the capacity for that degree of futility deserved my attention.

Naturally, Cedeño ended up playing for Seattle, the scene for my second story. This one is less about him than about a) me (borrrrrrrring) and b) my good and dear friend turned implacable enemy Yuniesky Betancourt.

The Mariners signed Betancourt in 2005, after he’d defected from Cuba. Watching him play infield that year was extraordinary. He moved with grace, speed and infinite precision, and was in fact so beautiful I used to turn up as early as possible to games just to watch him take fielding practice. During one game, he played second base while Professional Large Man Mike Morse handled shortstop; I’m pretty sure Betancourt made more plays on the right side of the infield than Morse did.

In 2006, he completely fell apart. He actions turn kludgy and slow, and he seemed ill-at-ease in his thickening body. He also couldn’t hit worth a damn (Yuniesky Betancourt is an anagram for ‘Batter Nine You Sucky’). I took baseball rather too personally at the time, and New Betancourt felt like a betrayal. Affection and admiration became disbelief, then unrelenting fury.

In an attempt to evict Betancourt from my memories, I latched onto basically any other shortstop option that presented itself. In 2009, that was Cedeño, who arrived via trade. Cedeño was very bad and I knew it, but I was fed up, and anger makes fools of the best of us.

On April 19th, the Mariners got their asses kicked by Rick Porcello and the Detroit Tigers. Betancourt started at shortstop and made two errors, while Cedeño handled second just fine and hit a home run. I left Safeco Field in a Betancourt-fueled rage and proceeded to get extremely drunk, as was my tradition at the time.

The events of that evening remain a blur, but what I know is this: a few weeks later, an authentic Ronny Cedeño #3 Mariners jersey arrived at my door. Cedeño, I should point out, was terrible in Seattle. He hit .167/.213/.290 over 59 games with the Mariners before being punted in August. There is no good reason for anyone to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a Ronny Cedeño jersey. Hell, I bet even he doesn’t have one.

It’s still hanging in my closet, a testament to the folly of youth.

Based on the nonsense above, I am proud to name Ronny Cedeño, baseball player (supposed), as the inaugural member of the Secret Base Hall of Fame.

The criteria for admission to these hallowed sporting grounds will remain forever secret. So don’t ask.