2009/2010 Mets. The Jerry is gone version!

Mets acquired OF Jeff Francouer & $$$ from the Braves for OF Ryan Church.F

Francouer's struggles for the last two years have been well documented, but the Mets must think that he gives them a better shot at the plate than Ryan Church. That's highly debatable, although Frenchy does give them better power potential, something the Mets desperately need. He'll be their new right-fielder, while Angel Pagan and Jeremy Reed will split time in center until Carlos Beltran returns

....not so sure of this move....

 

At first looking at it, I call the trade a push, but now I'm leaning towards a plus with the Mets. Why?

A: Frenchy is 25, Church is in his 30's
B: Frenchy has always been saying he would love to play in NY (If you saw the game you heard this tonight)
C: Manuel was always down on Church, why I don't know, I like Church, but feel he was never going to get a fair shot with Manuel coaching the team.
D: Change of scenery is what Frenchy needs. (Also Church)

 

This is a terrible, TERRIBLE trade! I couldn't possibly use the word "terrible" enough times to describe how much I hate this deal. I was watching ESPNEWS this morning, saw this on the crawl and yelled "oh no!" My wife ran in; she thought something had happened to the baby.

Francoeur has "power to all fields"? His slugging percentage has declined every single year. His career slugging percentage is .424, which is boosted by relatively hitter-friendly Turner Field and will definitely go down in Citi Field. The only time he was actually a good corner OF was as a rookie five solid years ago. He was barely adequate in 2006 and 2007, and has been absolutely terrible ever since.

Defense doesn't matter much for an RF, but even if it did, Francoeur is not that much better than Church. If you want to make a trade because it helps you defensively, it had damn well better be for a catcher, shortstop, or 2B. Otherwise it's pointless unless the guy you're giving up is Todd Hundley-in-LF-level in playing his position.

Church is injury-prone? That's nice. Francoeur hurts the team when he's actually IN the lineup.

Church is 5 years older? So what? That does nothing to change the fact that Francoeur can't hit for power and wouldn't take a walk if his manager was standing behind him with a .357 Magnum pointed at his head.

Francoeur needs a change of scenery? What, that will somehow show him how to take a pitch or drive the ball?

They helped the Braves. They took a bad hitter off their hands and gave them a useful player who, when platooned with Matt Diaz, combines for one pretty good hitter.

This trade is absolutely indefensible. I am livid right now. 10x worse than the Castro deal.

 

I don't like this move on the Mets part either. Francoeur has been one of the worst players in baseball this year because he actually plays almost daily until recently. The guy swings at everything and the Mets if they really liked him could have signed him in the offseason when the Braves would certainly non tender him. I just don't understand this move, I know people are saying a change could help him but its not going to magically change his batter's eye or strike zone awareness. I think ultimately he's just going to be another guy the Met fans can boo.

 

In a best, BEST case scenario, this was simply Minaya saying "well, we need to shake things up a little, and Church is the only starter we have who doesn't have a crummy contract or is injured, or is providing good value. Let's just hope Howard Johnson can teach him a thing or two about the strike zone. And if it doesn't work out, we'll just non-tender him."

I hope to God they don't actually think Francoeur's any good and immediately sign him to a long-term deal.

 

First of all I could care less what a player says, it's all about performing on the field. Francoeur or anyone can say they hated their GM, team etc but they also need to produce too, which he clearly hasn't been.

You're right though that OBP isn't the only offensive stat that matters but what other offensive stats do you see that gives you any hope Francoeur doesn't belong on the bench or really the minor leagues? The guy is a productive player? Since when? The guy is only productive in making outs. The guy is a corner OFer who's on pace to hit 10 home runs this year, he hit 11 last year, and his SLG is .352, it was .359 last year to put that in prospective Jacoby Ellsbury who isn't a power hitter by any means has a .405 SLG this year and .394 last year. He's on pace to score under 70 runs and drive in under 70 runners. Again as a corner OFer, whose now playing in Citi Field. None of his stats show any hope for the guy.

I think we can all agree his biggest problem is he swings at everything, that most likely won't magically change putting on a new uniform. He's been one of the worse players in the game this year and last and actually hurts the team more by playing. The Braves blew it last year when they called him up after 2 or 3 days after they sent him to the minors, they should have left him there and forced him to try and learn the strike zone.

You can call it low risk/high reward (which I guess is kind of true only because Francoeur has been bad the last 2 years) but really that's like saying if I keep collecting loose change I find on the ground then I might be a millionaire one day. Maybe he will rebound and maybe he'll be playing for the Long Island Ducks in 2 years, which is likely with the way things are going. This trade was clearly a I'll tell you my underperforming OF who I hate for your underperforming OF who you hate.

The only thing I wish is that I had some Enron stock to sell Omar.

 

I don't see how a high stress environment like New York will help him to be honest. He's not a hometown kid anymore. See how the New York fans react the next time he strikes out swinging at pitches outside the zone with a guy on third and less than two outs. He had the perfect situation to excel in Atlanta. I was routing for the guy too, no doubt about it but his problems seemed to be way past just environmental to me.

 

Francoer could cost the Mets runs. I've seen his free swinging cost Atlanta plenty. You get a guy on third with one or no outs and a decent pitcher will own Francoer. He'll go up to the plate and you can see in his eyes how bad he wants to crush the ball. I've seen him struck out several times in situations like this. I live in Georgia and I watch almost all of the games. Not saying he never comes through but the problem is lately he's failed more often. But there is more upside which is why this baffles me. Frenchy was actually doing fairly well lately too. I think he had hit three or four doubles in his last four games or something close to that. All I can think is maybe there is something going on with Jeff and management that we didn't really know about. But in his exit interview on fox sportsouth friday night he was obviously choking back tears. Who knows.

 

He deserved to be sent to AA last year and if he couldn't see that there may be other issues with him that we weren't aware of. Bobby's known for treating his players right but I have no knowledge that this rumor of him being told he was going to AA by the batboy or whoever isn't true. I know Wren didn't exactly handle the Glavine situation very well. But it's harder to believe that Bobby wronged a player.

 

OBP's not the only offensive stat, just the most important one. But hey, pick an offensive stat, it's almost certain that Francoeur is awful at it. Let's see, slugging percentage is below .360 for the last season and a half. Batting average? Lousy, and an unimpressive .266 for his career. He can't steal bases. OPS+ for his career? 89. 11% worse than an average outfielder.

Calling a player "productive" doesn't make it so. The stats state the exact opposite. Like I said, pick any relevant statistic. We have a MOUNTAIN of evidence that Jeff Francoeur can't play baseball at the major league level. He's got half a season where he was a productive outfielder, his rookie season, probably before NL pitchers realized "hey, this guy will swing at ANYTHING!", one where he was slightly below average, and 2 1/2 where he's been one of the absolute worst players in baseball relative to his position.

Everyone's happy at their introductory press conference. I'm sure he's a nice guy who calls his mom regularly and picks up the tab when his friends go out to the bar. I'm happy that he's happy. He can make me happy by learning the difference between a strike and a ball, something he's shown a startling inability to do in 2600 major league plate appearances.

Actually, it's his first half season in the league where he looked like a budding star. That's all. In the 4 1/2 that followed, he's vacillated between mediocre and abjectly horrible.

81 games of Ryan Church and 81 games of scrubs will produce more runs than 162 games of Jeff Francoeur. If Minaya was non-tendering Church anyway, that's dumb. Making a dumb move to avoid making a different dumb move doesn't make you smart.

Where's the high reward? His first 270 plate appearances where he looked good out of the 2600 he's had thus far? Ryan Church, that loathsome singles hitter, has a higher career slugging percentage than Francoeur, despite playing in miserable hitters' parks for most of his career.

Maybe, maybe, there's a 20% chance he's Jose Guillen all over again, without the crazy; rushed to the majors, needed a change of scenery, and the lightbulb came on after several seasons where he looked like crap. That doesn't justify giving an archrival the other 1/2 of a good RF platoon when they already had Matt Diaz and taking a headache off their hands. I would postulate that the odds on Ryan Church staying healthy are far better than the odds on Francoeur becoming a useful baseball player.

However, I will agree on one thing: he needs a new nickname. Let's ditch Frenchy; I'm going to call him "Out Machine". If he proves me wrong, I'll reconsider.

 

That's asinine, there's no evidence in the past 2 years that Francoeur can hit big league pitching and to all fields. He's been one of the worst players in baseball in that time and frankly shouldn't have been in the majors. You keep harping on what Francoeur did in from 2005-2007. It's obvious that the book is out on him and teams/pitchers know how to pitch to him to get him out. The player you keep describing doesn't exist anymore and hasn't since 2007.

It's not even that his OBP is low (which is an understatement). It's that his command of the strike zone is beyond pathetic. Pitchers can get him out by throwing pitches 3 feet out of the strike zone knowing he'll swing and get himself out on it.

Again those flashes were 2 years ago, if he only had one bad season and was turning it around this year you'd have a point but he's been even worse this year so far. Picking one month is a tiny sample size, I could show you how Julio Lugo had a good June this year too but he still sucks. His Guerrero-esque arm doesn't help his hitting.

Again all of Francoeur's stats sucks not just OBP.

Bad arguement, Reyes got better and Francoeur is getting worse. And there's nothing in Francoeur's stats or performance that gives him any hope.

The Mets are paying Alex Cora, a back up infielder, who has no pop in his bat and is an ok defensive player with limited range 3 million dollars so they could have paid Church 3-4. If the Mets keep Francoeur I believe he'd get around 6-8 million. And Francoeur is basically (or at least should be) a 4th OFer at this point.

Don't compare Dunn with Francoeur. Dunn only hits 40 HRs in his sleep each year and has a career OBP of .382, .519 SLG, .902 OPS compared to Francoeur's .308/.424/.732 so yes teams can live with Dunn's strikeouts.

 

Sorry Mikey I love you, I do, but this is clearly a homer post. You're defending him without any actual evidence or stats to back you up. I'm sure he shows flashes of good games here and there but more often than not his butt is back on the bench after 3 or 4 pitches putting up 0ers in the box scores.

I understand he hits the ball to all fields but even his gap power doesn't show up in his stats as he only has 19 extra base hits this year to sport his .352 SLG %. I'm even starting to question if his power game has fallen off the cliff.

 

Castillo is better than Francoeur, and it's not close. Over the last two years, Francoeur's slugging percentage has only been slightly better than Castillo's, and his OBP is light years worse. Factor in the fact that you can live with a second baseman who doesn't hit for power whereas an RF who doesn't hit for power is useless, and it's not close at all. If you want to factor in salary, then you have an argument, but you're arguing, as I read it, apples for apples.

Francoeur has 2 100 RBI seasons before age 25? Fantastic! Except that in 2006, the first of those seasons, he wasn't actually a good player. 29 HR and 103 RBI are impressive, but he still only managed a .442 slugging percentage, far below what you'd expect for those raw numbers. And that's probably tied to his complete inability to tell a ball from a strike. If he were a choosier hitter, he'd select better pitches to hit.

I'm not just using OBP. His slugging percentage is anemic for a right fielder. His OPS is bad. His OPS+ (adjusting for park) is worse. His runs created numbers are poor. Pick a stat, and he's probably awful at it.

Here's a fun one, too: offensive winning percentage. It says that if a team used 9 of a given player, this is the percentage of games they'd win. OK, in his rookie year, over those exalted 274 plate appearances, a team with 9 Jeff Francoeurs would, assuming average pitching and defense, have a .635 winning percentage. Awesome. In 2006, that first 100 RBI year? .404. A second division finish. 2007, the second? .524. Middle-of-the-road baseball team. The last two years? .341 and .321, respectively. Historically bad.

Those flashes of success are more than offset by his long periods of suck.

Below average OBP, sure. You can get by with a .330 OBP just fine as long as you're slugging a ton. Except that Francoeur's OBP isn't just below average; it's abysmal. Even in his 1 1/2 good seasons (and I'm using the term "good" generously), he didn't top .340 in OBP.

How are they fine? His 2006 season was terrible! And please, don't smack me over the head with this 103 RBI nonsense. That Braves lineup was so loaded that anyone hitting in the middle of the order could have registered 103 RBI...especially if they were swinging at every damn pitch. His 2007 season was barely above average, and I reiterate, for a RF, which is probably the 2nd or 3rd most important offensive position on the team, that's nothing to write home about.

Jose Reyes' ability to discover plate patience in the majors, after showing no signs of it in the minors, was a miracle. Nothing less. If the Mets can turn Francoeur into the patient hitter that Reyes has become, I would heartily endorse large salary raises for everyone involved. In fact, they'd be just one miracle away from sainthood.

Because Ryan Church is a useful baseball player. You talk about him like he's Timmy from South Park, yet he played in 67 games thus far, out of 85, which puts him far ahead of most of the Mets regulars. Unlike Francoeur, Church can actually tell the difference between a ball and a strike. Church can't hit lefties? Very true. Of course, Francoeur can't hit righties or lefties, and in any case, the Mets had Fernando Tatis around to platoon with Church. Much as the Braves will now have Matt Diaz to platoon with him, and will have a pretty good RF between them.

Where did I knock his strikeouts? I don't care about his strikeouts in the least. I think they're among the least of his concerns, in fact. I care about the fact that he make an out better than 70% of the time he comes to the plate. I don't much care if they're strikeouts, groundouts or fly outs. He's an Out Machine.

 

Too caught up in stats? The guy has been one of the worst baseball players the past 2 years. He's one of the few players in the game that actually hurts his team by playing, imagine that, just by being in the line up everyday he hurts his team because he's that bad at the plate. His VORP (which is a measure of his value versus an average replacement player) is -7, which means the Braves could probably sign an independent player or anyone in their minor league system and stick him in RF and he would most likely out perform Francoeur at the plate.

I don't need to watch him everyday to see he stinks, it's all in the numbers and it's not like there's any evidence he could turn it around or he's just having some bad luck. He just can't hit and the pitchers know how to pitch to him, it's plain and simple. Baseball is a hard sport, players need to learn how to adjust and that's something Francoeur hasn't done.

I understand he has good games every once and awhile and that he looks great in a uniform so it's puzzling why he's not better because he obviously had talent to get to the MLB but sometimes guys just fade out.

I mean what else am I or anyone else missing? People keep trying to defend him but aren't backing up their stance just saying the typical 'he has upside' or 'he's shown flashes in the past' that's nice but give me some evidence or facts to try to convince me otherwise. Show or tell me how he's going to turn it around. I have no problem admitting if I'm wrong (it's happened before) but there's nothing here to back any positive stances on the guy.

 

I would agree with you if this was a short period of time that he'd been struggling, or even having an off year. But as I've said above, he's got 2600+ major league plate appearances, and in the vast majority, he has not looked like a quality major league hitter. An excellent half-season as a rookie, a mediocre 2006 season, and otherwise, he's been an extremely poor hitter.

Every time I hear the "don't get too caught up in the stats" argument, I usually find it to be a cover for someone who gets too attached to a particular player. He looks like a baseball player. He hustles, he gets his uniform dirty, he hits sweet-looking line drives, he plays good defense. These are all things that endear him to old time baseball fans. Incidentally, I call this "Darin Erstad Syndrome". Erstad has been earning hefty paychecks for years on the strength of those beloved Little Things and a couple seasons early in his career where he looked like a decent hitter. This has nicely camouflaged the fact that he hasn't been able to hit his way out of a paper bag for a decade.

It's understandable; you watch a guy constantly and think "gosh, he's so close, all he has to do is X". X being "show a little better judgment" or "fix that hitch in his swing" or "stop opening his front shoulder so much" or whatever. Except that he hasn't done it yet, and he's had some very smart people trying to correct the problem. Look, Bobby Cox may be a scumbag wife-beater, but he's an awfully good manager. He's probably forgotten more about baseball than most people will ever know. If there was "just one little thing" that Francoeur had to do, and it could be corrected, there's a pretty good chance Cox and his staff would have done so. And yet, 5 seasons into his career, Out Machine has been getting steadily worse.

Did he need out of Atlanta? Probably. Who knows, maybe hearing Howard Johnson and Jerry Manuel telling him something different is all he needs. Maybe Cox and Co. washed their hands of the kid two years ago and he's been drifting ever since. I find that to be extremely unlikely, but it is possible. The point is, when you've got as many plate appearances to go on as we do with Out Machine, the numbers very seldom lie. 2600+ plate appearances is a more than fair sample size, and however much you want to pull for the guy (I certainly do; I want him to succeed now that he's a Met) it's not likely that there's a quality major league hitter lurking beneath that sub-.700 OPS.

Hell, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that a year from now, he's slugging .500 and posting an acceptable on base percentage and Matt is giving me hell for being wrong. I hope at that time we're all treated to a round of B.S. articles in the NY Post about how sabermetrics can't show you the soul of a baseball player and how all Francoeur needed to succeed was an organization that believed in him.

But I doubt it.

 

I've been calling it the 'David Eckstein Syndrome'.

 

Yes it's a real stat. Google it. There's more to judging a player's value than batting average and RBIs now. I know these new stats aren't popular with people when it doesn't help make their arguement but they really are a pretty good tool to use and GMs and front offices use them.

That's fine if Boik is your new best friend, he can have you if he wants you. I'm going to call UPS up and cancel package of the Papelbon jeresy I sent to you in 2005 now. I guess my new best friend will be Phunwin, we can talk about how we both like Adam Dunn and it doesn't matter if a guy strikes out or grounds out because there's no such thing is a productive out in baseball.

 

You really can't judge everything by RBI's. For example Hanley Ramirez has 60 RBI's (at last check) but he leads the NL in hitting with runners in scoring position. A stat like RBI depends so much on other people setting the table.

Offensively I look at On Base + Slugging. A high number in that category means you are doing something right. Though I do think batting average is becoming somewhat underrated among stat junkies. For example a hit and a walk both equal one base and raise your on base percentage the same. However a runner cant move up on a walk. So the hit is more valuable. In my opinion.

I like using stats because in baseball stats actually show something unlike most other sports, but at the same time it can be overdone.

Oh and I have to add this on. I completely disagree with the productive out part of your post. A runner on second and no-one out, grounding it to the second baseman and moving the runner up is productive out for sure. So is a sac bunt, or else no-one would ever do it. What about an out where you make the pitcher throw a bunch of pitches? That is productive because it can wear a pitcher down.

 

Sac Fly? Hitting the ball to the right side with a runner on second and none out? There are productive outs. C'mon dude, you're better than that.

 

lol Sorry, I should've read your post before saying almost the exact same thing.

 

Fair enough. I can see that.

Yay, BFF!!!!! Let's have ice cream sundaes together.

This is 7/8 of a fantastic post. Unfortunately, the bit about productive outs is like topping a delicious hot fudge sundae (wow, twice in one post, that's it, I'm going to Friendly's tonight) with rabbit turds instead of a cherry.

In specific, limited situations, yes, individual outs can be productive. For instance, in the bottom of the ninth, tie game, with a man on third and one out, a fly ball to deep center field is every bit as good as a home run. Unfortunately, people tend to zero in on those specific, limited situations and ignore the fact that outs are a very valuable thing, and that the advantage you might get from advancing a runner is undone by the fact that you've given up an out. You've acquired a modest increase in the chances for scoring one run for a significant decrease in your chances for scoring more than one run. In the long run, it evens out.

And think about strikeouts vs. outs in play. Of course strikeouts are bad; they cost you 1 of your precious 27 outs. You can criticize strikeouts for never being productive, but then, strikeouts also never cost you more than one out. A ground ball can cost you two outs. So can a fly ball. You can even argue that a strikeout forces the pitcher to throw more pitches than a ground out or fly out. These things even out.

Someone did a study in 2004 on the "productive out" and actually found that productive outs might actually lead to a decrease in scoring. And that, in any event, their impact is almost certainly statistically insignificant. Another article was unable to find a correlation between productive outs and winning.

 

I think productive outs are better understood from a situational aspect. As you stated, a deep fly with a man on third and less than two outs in the 9th inning is certainly better than a strike out.

Also, guys like Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds can render the K totals useless because they hit for so much power.

If you don't hit 40+ homers or drive in 120+ runs a season, you can ill afford to put up 150+ K's in a season. Therefore, situational hitting becomes much more important. JMO.

 

Well its 8/8 of a fantastic post to me, because my point wasn't to prove that making an out is ever a good thing. In a perfect situation you'd never make an out obviously. I mean making an out will NEVER increase your chances of scoring over not making an out. It would be stupid to think that was possible

Outs WILL happen though, and when you make them you do want them to be productive in some way. You never TRY and make an out, but if you do you at least want to move that runner over.

I mean if you can honestly tell me you'd rather strike out than move the runner to third with one out because it wont help you win anyway I'll accept that as your opinion. Me personally if I make an out I want to move that runner up.

I guess I've just seen it happen to my team so many times this season. Stolen base, grounder to second, sac fly, and we end up losing the game by a run or it just completely swings momentum.

I think we at least agree you never WANT to make an out. Thats dumb haha.

 

I knew I was opening up a can of worms once I typed that. Phunwin pretty much took all of my thunder so there's nothing more I could really add to his post.

Again Phunwin did an excellent job with his post which I agree with 100%. I'm almost positive we've had this discussion earlier this year about Dunn and productive outs, maybe even in this very thread.

Anyway I'd rather have a guy on 2nd base with 0 outs than a guy on 3rd with 1 out. Obviously if a batter is absolutely going to make an out it's nice for him to move a runner closer to home plate but never the less an out is an out and it still hurts the team and decreases the team's chances of scoring multiple runs (if they score at all).

 

Oh I agree 100%

My point is that outs are going to happen, and when they do wouldnt you rather them increase your chances of scoring? Even if its only by 5% or something small?

I dont think anyone is saying its a good thing to make outs, but its inevitable and they have to happen sometime.

 

Agreed. If you're facing a Roy Halladay/Josh Beckett/Tim Lincecum, you're best chance to score a run may be to play small-ball and scratch across a run or two because the chances of stringing together 3 or 4 hits in an inning isn't good.

 

This is all true, which was my point about comparing Dunn with Francoeur is silly because even with Dunn striking out a million times a year he still hits 40 home runs and gets on base at a .380 clip.