Memories of Jeff Francoeur

[G-Fafif]

Great Ron Swoboda like catch in the Eric Bruntlett Unassisted Triple Play Game -- and made it the Eric Bruntlett Triple Play Game.

His card represents 2010 on the Empire level at Citi Field. Appropriate, sort of.

As bmfc1 alluded to in another thread, he employed a dog walker (or claimed to in Metro One commercials).

Maintains longstanding rule that if you start the most games in RF for the Mets one year, you don't remain a Met by the time the next year ends. Since '98:

Butch Huskey
Roger Cedeno
Derek Bell
Matt Lawton
Jeromy Burnitz
Roger Cedeno
Richard Hidalgo
Victor Diaz
Xavier Nady
Shawn Green
Ryan Church
Jeff Francoeur

Francoeur, on the other hand, is the first Met since Huskey in 1997 and 1998 to make the most RF starts in consecutive seasons.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yet neither a full season.

He'll be a useful player for somebody someday --- a Milt Thompson or a Ricky Jordan on a future Phillies pennant winner.

Instead he's a Wes Chamberlain that we insisted on using full-time. Cool that he got a peg at the plate in his last game. What a particuarly un-cool game it otherwise was, though.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

in the end, a symbol of bobby cox's genius. Boy did he soak the mets.

[Fman99]

The triple play. And the cannon of a right arm out there in right. First two things that come to mind.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Trade Ryan Church!
Jeff does OK!
Back for year two!
He plays ev'ry day!
You'll be surprised, you're doing the French Mistake!
VOILA!

Come on, try it!
Move the scene along!
All of Manuel's lineups can't be wrong!
Wheeeeeeee!!

Not without skills!
Not without charm!
The smile from his wife!
The unGodly arm!
But stick him in right and you're doing the French Mistake!
..................VOILA!!

[Valadius]

I'm tempted to use "no hit, good field" on him, but he didn't field particularly well, as really only his throwing arm was good.

[metirish]

Actually if anytthing I was surprised at how good an outfielder he was.....my memories are of him swinging from his heals in just about every at bat.

[Guest themetfairy]

I loved his attitude and the fact that he always had a smile. I always hoped his hitting would come around.

[Gwreck]

G-Fafif wrote: Matt Lawton

That was not the name I expected to see for 2001. He has 2 more starts but 2 fewer total games played than his runner up.

Two good trivia questions there:
1. How many Mets led their team in games played at a position in a particular season, having been acquired at the trading deadline or later?
2. Who else started in RF in 2001? There were 9 total, with 46, 44, 28, 21, 9, 6, 4, 3, and 1 games started each.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Gwreck wrote: Matt Lawton That was not the name I expected to see for 2001. He has 2 more starts but 2 fewer total games played than his runner up. Two good trivia questions there: 1. How many Mets led their team in games played at a position in a particular season, having been acquired at the trading deadline or later? 2. Who else started in RF in 2001? There were 9 total, with 46, 44, 28, 21, 9, 6, 4, 3, and 1 games started each.

1) Luis Castillo in 2007.
2) Timo, Sparklehorse, Lenny Harris, Big Mark Johnson, Agbayani, Gary Matthews, Jr., Darryl Hamiltoe and two other guys.

[TransMonk]

Edgy DC wrote: ...and two other guys.

Jay Payton and somebody else?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Make that three other guys. Sargelet was a 2002 dude.

[Gwreck]

Sparklehorse ...is Shinjo? He had 28 starts.
Perez was the runner up with 44 starts. Johnson had 4. Hamiton had 3.

Agbayani and Payton are wrong.

Castillo is correct but he's not the only one.

[seawolf17]

themetfairy wrote: I loved his attitude and the fact that he always had a smile. I always hoped his hitting would come around.

Me too. I was very pro-Francoeur when he was acquired, and I'm disappointed that it didn't work out.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Gwreck wrote: Castillo is correct but he's not the only one.

Bordick 2000.

[seawolf17]

Gwreck wrote: 1. How many Mets led their team in games played at a position in a particular season, having been acquired at the trading deadline or later?

Keith Hernandez.

[dgwphotography]

I loved the arm, hated the strike outs. More than anything, I'll remember the smile. It was nice to see someone in the Majors get it like he did. He knew he was a lucky SOB, and I wish more had his attitude.

[Guest OlerudOwned]

It was a shame to see someone in the Majors not get it like he didn't. He thought he was entitled to a spot, and I wish he had a better attitude.

He seemed like a friendly enough guy and I sincerely hoped he would turn it around and make some good of his physical talents, but he wound up coming off as pretty stubborn, in denial, and unwilling to improve himself. Maybe I'm wrong, and he really was taking the advice to heart, but for whatever reason just could not apply it when he stepped into the box. Obviously I can only go off of quotes and reports and the like, but he seemed to have a history of needing to do it his own way in the face of glaringly poor results.

I don't think he's a bad dude. Just immature.

[Chad ochoseis]

Despite all the criticism, he was much better than the guy we gave up for him.

He drew the second Met walk of the 2010 season. I remember this because I'd picked him for the first walk of the season in the "guess the firsts" thread. He was the best position player on the team in April.

Better OF defense than I expected, based strictly on the eyeball method of measuring quality.

He didn't hit badly during the stretches where he remembered that it's OK to take a pitch. He seemed to go into cycles where he'd have a few bad games and then start swinging at any pitch that shared a zip code with home plate, thereby having more bad games, thereby swinging at more bad pitches, thereby digging himself deeper into a rut.

Still fairly young. Still may prove to be a fine player. Not worth the $4M minimum gamble it would take in 2011 to find out.

Have a great career, Frenchy.

Gwreck wrote: 1. How many Mets led their team in games played at a position in a particular season, having been acquired at the trading deadline or later?

Hidalgo?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Here's we see why the phrase "get it" is so woefully inadequate. If "getting it" is such a doable task, why can we not describe what it is beyond a deliberately obscure pronoun phrase?

Above one guy cites his ability to get it as a redeeming virtue, while the next poster cites his clear inability as his damning flaw.

As for me, I have no clues with which to conclude what Jeff Francoeur thinks he's entitled to. A reasonably priced dog-walker, I guess.

[Centerfield]

I will remember him sucking just the way I expected him to suck. I will remember being frustrated that so many people had a hard time seeing that he sucked.

I will remember his one saving grace being that he sucked less than the guy we traded him for.

[dgwphotography]

Actually, I don't think the phrase is inadequate at all. I said that Frenchy "got it" referring to his demeanor on the field. He "got" that he was a lucky SOB to make the living he did playing baseball, and his smile showed that.

[Guest Edgy DC]

What I'd hope to reconcile is how you and Olerud, certainly both reasonable folks, saw the same performance and arrived at such radically opposite inferences --- one concluding Francoeur understood how lucky he was, and the other that he believed he was entitled to all he got and more.

We're most of us pretty lucky people, I think.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

The wife and I have been very lucky with our child; she's beautiful, seems to be bright and sociable, and has had no major health problems. I realize fully how fortunate we are.

This realization alone isn't enough to qualify me as being a good father; while it may seem superficially admirable, I also realize that this only leads me to good-dad-dom if I also seek out and recognize that which makes for good childrearing, and do it well. Performance, not one's intentions, is ultimately what matters. Intentions merely serve to mitigate or inform performance; even if important, they matter much less that performing well.

Jeff Francoeur appears to be a standup, appreciative human being with well-above-average athletic ability and an arm that could take out entire armored divisions. He's also, on balance, a pretty bad major league baseball player with poor self-awareness and without the ability to make anything more than cosmetic-- and temporary-- corrections to his game.

I wish him luck and success; I doubt very much that he'll find it for any sort of sustained period in the major leagues.

[Guest OlerudOwned]

I was intentionally being a little glib by framing an opposite opinion in dgw's words. Like I said in the other post, I could be completely wrong about his stubbornness. I know how difficult it can be to stop making the same mistakes, no matter how hard you study up and rehearse or practice whatever it is you're trying to improve. Sometimes we just get that mental block, that sense of panic, where everything we planned for goes totally kaput in the moment where you try to apply it. Whether it be hacking away at pitches you swore you'd lay off of, or, uh, rushing a post that doesn't represent your fully formed opinion of a situation. Whoops.

Frenchy's an interesting character. I'll remember the smile, but I'll also remember the uncomfortable sort of passive-aggression that came in behind it. Not to say the affability was an act. But making comments about wanting to play everyday when he clearly didn't deserve to did strike me as either lacking self-awareness or as feeling entitled, and as totally nonconstructive. It took a lot of the shine off.

I think it'd do him a lot of good to swallow some pride and quietly accept a bench-role or a demotion and accept that he needs to completely overhaul his plate approach, and getting to the root of whatever it is that prevents him from applying that approach in a real game. He's still young, and has room to grow as a person and as a player, and I'm rooting for him.

[Guest Edgy DC]

See, I remember him as, when Beltran came back, experessing complete awareness and acceptance that he was the odd man out. I guess I've missed some quotes along the way, but even his ballyhooed demand for a trade was more a request along the lines of "I like it here, but if they don't want me, I'd like to go somewhere else and that'd be find too" which struck me as perfectly reasonable and respectful.

[Ceetar]

Gone but not forgotten...Frenchy is on the 2011 Calendar. (I'm not sure 9/1 is the time to set up a Calendar kiosk in the mall, but what do i know?)

[Gwreck]

Bordick and Hernandez were the other two.

2001 RF starts
Lawton 46
Perez 44
Shinjo 28
McEwing 21
Bragg 9
Escobar 6
Johnson 4
Hamilton 3
Harris 1

[batmagadanleadoff]

I remember the play me or trade me quotes, which were then cleaned up and politically corrected, presumably after Frenchy conferred with his people. And even then, he was working on Jerry behind the scenes for more PT. What kind of message is being delivered when a rightfielder plays almost every day even though he on-bases under .300? If I was an outfielder behind Frenchy on the depth chart, I'd be hoping for Frenchy to crack an ankle or something.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Is somebody someday going to at least try and find these wretched quotes?