Francoeur really stunk last night.... no walks, struck out again!

I went out to the game with my father because I had free tickets. we went to Shake Shack. even over an hour before the game the line was crazy long. the burgers were good. we got fries from Box Frites, and that line was long too, because they were only using two of the four registers they have. that was disappointing.

mmm, burger.

in which I advocated that a one-year bet on Smoltz not to have been washed up, considering how effective he’s been every year, was not a bad bet.

Frenchy’s got his contact rate up high enough where even if he isn’t showing any improvement in power the odd lucky BABIP inflated season would make him a pretty valuable player. Of course, it also means that the odd unlucky BABIP deflated season would make him pretty terrible. But he is also showing some power again, which actually makes him a marginally interesting gamble. But $3 million is cutting it awful close. He could be worth quite a bit more and it wouldn’t be the surprise of the century, but same thing if he was worth quite a bit less. And considering he has shown some kind of tangible improvement, a good agent might actually find a way to nab him a raise. Still, At $3 mil, keeping Frenchy around with F! as a backup plan isn’t a horrible idea, especially if you can find a nice patch for the other outfield vacancy. I love Sam Page’s idea of moving Beltran to LF and bringing in a solid defensive CF who can hit a little, that market seems to have a lot more value in it than the LF market does right now, and having an awesome defensive outfield couldn’t be a bad thing.

You can find it. His Baseball-Reference page has his numbers since joining the Mets. He’s hitting .308 / .338 / .500 since joining the Mets, which is quite solid. The reason its not convincing anyone is that its just 157 PAs, which is too small a sample size to assume its anything more than statistical noise. His component numbers haven’t changed much at all, in fact, his “improvement” can be essentially traced to two factors:

A. His BABIP has gone from .276 as a Brave to .320 as a Met. Since his career mark is the nominal .301, this number suggests he’s just flipped around the lucky coin. Put another way, he was just as likely (or unlikely if you prefer) to hit .250 over an extended period as he was to hit .308.

B. His HR/FB. This was really the most troubling trend in Frenchy’s career. He put up an awesome 17.2% mark in his stellar rookie season, but it had declined in every year since, to 15.5%, 9.7%, and 6.6% in each subsequent season, and falling all the way to 4.7% in his time with the Braves. In his time with the Mets its actually jumped all the way up to 12.0%, which is a significant enough improvement to guess that this is more than just “statistical noise” and an actual adjustment NeutraCoeur might have made (see what I did there, instead of “Failcoeur or Wincoeur”).

If 12% of his flyballs are going for homers, the odds that Francoeur can be average or a bit better are pretty decent, even if he doesn’t find a way to walk more. But there’s still significant risk that he puts up a crappy BABIP (ahem, .276) and is worse than worthless.

But we don’t need Francoeur as a starter either, since he blows. I’d take Larry Wayne as a bench player over Francoeur. Since that is what Francoeur would be if the Mets were run by people with brains.