Open Thread: Mets vs Reds

5-Hole hitter if there ever was one. Awesome. Why not make the trade over the break, so we don’t throw away another game with a lineup like this?

who can see fewer pitches? I’m excited.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2u9ib2r.jpg

…and struck our Francoeur two weeks ago.

MURPHY IS HITTING 3rd?

It’s like the dead ball era. How many total HRs from our lineup tonight? Like 13? And it’s July 10!! I’m gonna get a drink on tonight, fellas!

lmao almost like watching the old nieve. ron ron ron
he was never good

KKK

tatis wont be able to clog up the outfield

nieve is pitching a one hitter tonite. i can feel it.

nobody on base!

right now i think bette midler could pitch into the 8th against us

Why don’t opposing teams have any problems hitting HR here? I’m sure someone has done it already, but what’s the stats on opposing HRs hit at Shea vs. Citi?

and then he gets to face us…just what the doctor ordered

It would make my game-viewing experience more enjoyable.

The end result of which will be the Mets firing our Dan Duquette and hiring our Theo Epstein. I can dream, can’t I?

we traded Ryan Church for Jeff Francoeur.

The farther we fall back behind the Phillies and under .500 the more asanine trades Omar is going to make, putting us farther behind.

It’s a vicious cycle that can only end in his firing, a depleted farm system, and crappy on-field talent.

that everyone I have talked to loves the deal. And when Frenchy comes and hits .265/.290/.430, David Wright’s BABIP will fall and the fans will blame him for our ineptitude.

Please, please send me back to 2006.

I swear to god, the thing that I find the most bizarre is how much the Wilpons hate the Mets and love the Dodgers. I mean, W – T – F ??? There’s no mention of the 1986 WS, but there’s shitloads of Dodger/Ebbets memorabilia. Jesus Christ.

It’s like every corny Hollywood baseball movie, where the owner of the team is actively trying to make his team fail for some nefarious reason.

Not even mentioning how they were duped out of all their money in a Ponzi scheme. Wilpon is probably working to recoup his Madoff losses by replying to that West African prince who keeps emailing him.

How can an owner like that ever be successful? This franchise is a reflection of its freak owner. A fish rots from the head.

I know our pitching sucks lately, but when you score ZERO runs every game, does it really matter? I mean, seriously.

Who cares if our ERA is 0.50 or 10.50, we’ll still lose every game.

I think the Royals should trade for Jeff Francoeur.

Yeah, that Jeff Francoeur. The one that’s become the bane of Atlanta Braves fans and the laughingstock of baseball.

Some players get called "underrated" so much that they become overrated in the process. And for some, the opposite occurs: they get labeled overrated, and that label sticks to them so tightly that the pendulum swings too far the other way.

I’m not arguing that Francoeur’s performance as a ballplayer the last two years has become underrated: he really has been as bad as everyone thinks. But here’s the thing: Francoeur’s performance has become so maligned that I feel the public has lost sight of the fact that underneath those numbers still lies an enormous bundle of talent.

Talent can be a curse if you can’t convert that talent into performance, but let’s not forget: Francoeur has already performed at the major league level. In 2005, he made his major league debut on July 7th, and within two months was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He hit .300/.336/.549 for the season, and finished 3rd in Rookie of the Year voting despite playing in just 70 games. It helped that in just 67 games in the outfield, he threw out 13 baserunners.

Granted, Miss South Carolina could explain the strike zone more coherently than he could. But he was just 21 years old. The following year, in full-time play he hit 29 homers. The year after that, he hit .293 with 19 homers and 40 doubles – and walked a respectable 42 times. He also won a Gold Glove. He played in every single game both years.

As recently as 14 months ago, Francoeur was a trendy breakout pick among some analysts. Instead, everything has gone to hell in a handbasket for Francoeur; he’s stopped hitting, the fans have turned on him, and the Braves are openly shopping him.

As Warren Buffett recently said, "be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." The collapse in Francoeur’s market value rivals that of any bank or automotive company. But while the stock market is nowhere near its peak value, those who invested near the market bottom on March 9th has done very well for themselves – and while Francoeur may never reach the heights once expected from him, I suspect that anyone who trades for him now will get a very good return on their dollar.

Since the start of last season, Francoeur is hitting .241/.289/.357. He’s a mess at the plate. He famously – though perhaps not entirely seriously – said a month ago that "If on-base percentage is so important, then why don’t they put it up on the scoreboard?" His defense has gone to pot as much as his offense – according to Ultimate Zone Rating, Francoeur has been about 6 runs below average on defense over the last year-plus, after being +17 in his Gold Glove year of 2007.

So yes, pretty much every number you look at suggests that Francoeur is a waste of a roster spot. Except for one, which is the most important number for any player.

25. As in, Jeff Francoeur is just 25 years old. It’s waaay too early to give up on him. If you don’t believe me, you might want to consider the history of a very similar player. I am frankly stunned that I have not seen this comparison made before, though it’s possible I just haven’t looked in the right places.

Once upon a time, the Braves had a right fielder who, like Francoeur, met with immediate acclaim, stepping right into the lineup in mid-season and hitting .281/.304/.459 in 98 games, garnering a few Rookie of the Year votes. Like Francoeur, he was young (22) and considered an all-around talent despite the lack of speed (just one stolen base as a rookie). And like Francoeur, he swung at everything. He walked just eight times all season.

This right fielder struggled terribly the next two seasons, largely because opposing pitchers learned to exploit his impatience at the plate. In his sophomore season, he walked just 17 times in 75 games; in his third year he regressed even more, drawing just 11 walks in 60 games. He hit .235/.277/.354 combined.

The wrinkle is this: after his rookie season, this right fielder was traded, a trade that looked brilliant for the Braves when he struggled over the next two years. The team that traded for him looked like a bunch of morons.

That team was the Kansas City Royals. That player was Jermaine Dye.

Everything that has been written about Jeff Francoeur over the last year could have been written about Dye. I know, because I was the one writing about Dye 12 years ago. The comment I wrote about Dye in the 1999 Baseball Prospectus ended with the line, "His window of opportunity is just about closed." Yeah, I missed a little with that one. Dye hit .294/.354/.526 for the Royals that year. He also drew 58 walks. Ten years later, he’s still hitting.

Look, there’s obviously a good chance that Francoeur’s problems are terminal. As a professor of mine used to say, the plural of anecdote is not data. The fact that Dye turned into a star doesn’t mean that Francoeur is destined to do the same. But he has a chance to turn into a star. Go ahead and write down a list of every player in baseball who has the chance to become a star in the not-too-distant future, and is available to acquire for next to nothing. I’m guessing it’s a short list.

I thought the Greinke-for-Francoeur rumors this winter were ridiculous, and I mean that literally – I thought they were fabricated or at least exaggerated, because Dayton Moore is not that dumb. Today, you could probably pry Francoeur from the Braves with Greinke – Luke Greinke.

In a Facebook exchange – I can’t believe I just wrote that – Craig Calcaterra, the brilliant writer and authoritative Braves fan, put the price tag on Francoeur thusly:

"If I were running the Braves I’d accept a nice thank you card from Moore and call it a deal. Wait, that’s not true. I’d accept a slightly shabby thank you card if that’s all he had. I just can’t stand the sight of that guy in right field anymore."

That is not the voice of a 15-year-old fan on an anonymous message board – that is the voice of someone who speaks on behalf of all Braves fans: they are sick of Frenchy.

Every baseball team has some sort of niche that they alone occupy, some unique strength that they can exploit to build a better baseball team. The Yankees are able to offer their players the personal use of a Brinks truck to haul all of the cash they’re being paid to the bank every two weeks. The Braves are the boyhood team of almost every young player that grows up in the southeast, and they mine the talent in their backyard with uncanny ability. The Cardinals offer players the chance to play in front of The Greatest Fans In Baseball™. And so on.

The Royals offer something to. They offer a player the chance to get away from the crush of overwhelming expectations. The team’s biggest weakness – its lack of a fan base – can become its biggest strength. A player that has fallen on their face somewhere else, with the bright glare of public scrutiny directly on them, can come to Kansas City and play in front of a small but loyal group of fans, a small and mostly non-threatening local media, and for a team whose expectations have already been ground down to nothing by the weight of 15 years of non-stop losing. For a player whose talent remains untapped, whose potential has become a curse, the Royals are the perfect team to rehabilitate that talent in a low-pressure environment.

As much as Francoeur reminds me of Dye, if the Royals trade for him he could equally remind us of Jose Offerman. Offerman, remember, was considered one of the best prospects in baseball in 1990, when he hit .326 in Triple-A and played dazzling shortstop at age 21. Offerman’s bat was almost as advertised, but his glove wasn’t; in his first full season in 1992, he made an amazing 42 errors, and 37 the year after that. The fans turned on him, he started to press, he hit just .210 in 1994, and despite rebounding to .287/.389/.375 in 1995, both the Dodgers and their fans were sick of him.

Which is where the Royals come in. Dye-for-Michael Tucker was Herk Robinson’s best trade – a direct challenge of two outfielders in which the Royals clearly came out on top. But the trade for Jose Offerman was Robinson’s most brilliant trade, because there was no downside. The trade worked beautifully – the Royals did what the Dodgers should have done years before and moved Offerman off of shortstop. He made a decent second baseman – although Bob Boone, God bless him, thought he had more value as a rangy first baseman – and in three years with the Royals Offerman hit .306/.385/.419. (And when he left as a free agent the Royals got two draft picks, one of whom was Mike MacDougal, who was later traded for Dan Cortes and Tyler Lumsden, who was then traded for Jordan Parraz. The shadow of Robinson’s trade can still be found in Northwest Arkansas today.)

But I didn’t explain why this trade was so brilliant. It was brilliant because the Dodgers were so desperate to get rid of Offerman that they were willing to take almost anything for him. All Robinson gave up was Billy Brewer, a former Rule 5 pick who as a lefty reliever was coming off a 5.56 ERA in 1995. Offerman turned out to be a perfect fit in Kansas City – but suppose he hadn’t. Suppose he was so bad that after two months the Royals finally called uncle and just released him. In which case, all the Royals would have lost in the trade was…Billy Brewer? Who cares?

I suspect that the Braves are close to that point with Francoeur. And Francoeur is close to that point with the Braves. Keep in mind, as much as any player would feel the pressure that comes with being anointed as "The Natural" at age 21, Francoeur must feel it worse. He was born in Atlanta. In the SI article about his rookie season it talks about the razzing he got from his high school buddies who – just three years after graduation – were coming to his games.

As perfect as everything must have been for him when he was playing well, it must be an absolute nightmare now for him to be struggling the way he is, in his hometown, for his favorite team, after being a first-round pick and potential franchise savior just a few short years ago. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his defensive numbers have collapsed along with his offensive ones. If it was just his offense that deteriorated, you could blame that on a poor approach at the plate. That his performance has declined in every phase suggests that the problem is psychological as much as it is physical.

Jeff Francoeur needs a new start, and Kansas City is just the place to give it to him. Working with Kevin Seitzer can’t hurt. Terry Pendleton, the Braves’ hitting coach, has come under a lot of fire of late in part because of Francoeur’s struggles. Pendleton may be a good hitting coach, but he’s not the right guy to be teaching plate discipline – just once in his career did he walk even 45 times. The Royals have already handed Seitzer a bunch of impatient hacks – why not turn the degree of difficulty up a notch?

Maybe Francoeur learns the strike zone and turns into Dye. If he doesn’t, he still could carve out a career as an overrated but still useful RBI guy, a la Joe Carter. Carter is one of the most overrated baseball players of my lifetime, but he wasn’t a bad player. You could win a world championship with him. Legend has it that he even had a big role to play in one.

Bottom line is this: the rumor du jour is that the Boston Red Sox are interested in Francoeur. Let me repeat that: THE BOSTON RED SOX ARE INTERESTED IN FRANCOEUR. If that isn’t a big flashing neon sign that the public opinion of Francoeur has shifted to the point where he’s now an underpriced commodity, I don’t know what is.

In a dream world, I’d like to see if Moore could interest the Braves in a swap of Francoeur for Jose Guillen. I mean, the Braves are going for it this year – they just traded for Nate McLouth – and Guillen can help them in the here and now. I suspect Guillen’s bat will translate nicely to the inferior league, Bobby Cox knows how to keep players like him in line, and as Guillen is a medicine best taken in small doses, the fact that they only have him under contract for a year-and-a-half minimizes their risk. I doubt this could be done straight up, because while Francoeur has negligible value, Guillen has negative value the way his contract stands. But if the Royals were able to pick up, say, the rest of Guillen’s contract for this year, I think that’s a gamble the Braves might consider. They get a free Jose Guillen for 2009, who along with McLouth dramatically upgrades their lineup, and they only have one year left on his contract to pay.

For the Royals, this move has the advantage of freeing up payroll in the future, clearing up the clubhouse in the present and the future. And it does so without significantly hurting the team on the field in the short term.

Guillen’s defense is so bad that he’s become almost unplayable. Alex Gordon returns in a month, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the best lineup when he returns is one that has Gordon at third base, Mark Teahen in right field, and Guillen platooning with Jacobs at DH. But Guillen’s personality threatens to blow up the clubhouse if he is relegated to a bench role. Better to move him now if the Royals can do so.

Even if the Royals can’t interest Atlanta in Guillen, though, they should see if some collection of second-tier talent can fetch Frenchy. Carlos Rosa, anyone? Rosa’s been hit hard in Omaha, but there’s a bunch of relief prospects in Double-A and below, and I’d be willing to give up any of the non-Disco variety. The Braves took a high-school pitcher drafted in the second round (Eric Cordier) in exhange for Tony Pena Jr; I wonder if they’d take another one – the disappointing Sam Runion – as part of their haul for Francoeur.

If the Royals do get Francoeur, they have the additional option of letting him figure things out in Triple-A for the rest of the year. He has options remaining, and my front office sources tell me that a player can not refuse an option until he has five years of service time accrued. Frenchy came into the season with 3 years, 88 days of service time, so depending on how long he stays in Omaha, it’s possible that a demotion will keep him in Kansas City an additional year. As it is, Francoeur would be under contract for 2010 and 2011, and if you can find three players under contract to the Royals who are likely to be better outfielders over those two seasons, you have better vision than I do.

Come on, Dayton. I appreciate you heeding my last suggestion, but this is much bigger. We all know you want to trade for him – he’s an ex-Brave, and you were reportedly very fond of him while you were in Atlanta. Not that one fan’s opinion means anything, but you’ll have my full support if you do. Even if every other fan out there thinks this particular fan is off his rocker.

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