"What, are you in a bad mood?"
"I got my laundry back."
"Golden Boy?"
"He didn't make it."
"I'm sorry."
"This is Golden Boy's son, Jason Perry."

Not Freedom. You can't send the next Roberto Clemente to AA.

I'm glad they made this move. He has a lot to learn, the question is if the Braves minor leagues can teach it.

My ideal - unlikely though it is - is for this to be Jermaine Dye II, where struggling hitter devoid of discipline goes back to the minors and returns later as an actual major league hitter.

Whoa.

Wow. Just, wow. Necessary, but totally unexpected. Just wow.

Sometimes bad things happen to bad posters.

He'll always have that performance in the last game of the 2006 season (HR, threw a guy out at home). Not that Braves fans care about that game.

I wonder how much of this was made possible by Brett Myers going to AA this weekend.

I'm so happy right now. *single tear*

What's with all these players being sent down to levels other than AAA? Is Dontrelle still at A ball?

Richmond is a dump and the Braves seemingly won't send any player they care about (except for a couple pitchers) there and the Braves (who own the franchise) are in a pissing contest with the city and are going to move it to the Atlanta 'burbs either next year or in 2010. They wouldn't want "reward" the city by sending a star there.

Plus, the mission is to get Jeff back on track and he liked and seemed to be learning a lot in Mississippi when he was there

Also, Jason fkking Perry? For real? Aw, blah.

Agreed, Richmond isn't going to get any love from Atlanta but I don't think that drove this decision. If you're going to demote The Smile That Saved Delta you might as well demote him to the last guy who showed any ability to improve his game. Thus, MS. I don't think the move to Gwinnett makes much difference.

The next question is who is in the market for a half-year rental for a slugging young first baseman or DH.

I wonder what Sheehan will have to say about this. Maybe he predicted a breakout in AA!

At the end of May, I traded Jeff Francoeur for Jon Rauch in my NL only keeper league.

What's with all these players being sent down to levels other than AAA?

At the SABR convention, I asked Mark Shapiro and Mike Veeck about possibly doing away with the affiliated minor league model entirely. While Shapiro (as I expected) said that wasn't a possibility, he did indicate that many GMs were unhappy with AAA and that there could be changes in the relationship between the majors and the AAA teams (although he didn't offer specifics).

-- MWE

I don't think the move to Gwinnett makes much difference.

Yeah, I probably didn't emphasize the progress he made a few years ago in MS enough but I think if the AAA team was currently in Gwinnett that might really change things because that is where Francouer is from.

As an aside, can you imagine a 4th of July Gwinnett Braves game with Francouer starting? It would probably sell more tickets than the real Braves game

I think this is just a July Fools joke or something... great news, but I can't bring myself to believe it's true.

What happened to Brandon Jones?

18,
Started off hot then went 5-33 with a bunch of Ks and got sent down when Kotsay was back, which was the plan anyway.

Odd secondary stats-he has a higher LD% than last year (20.8 vs. 19.4), but the BABIP has plummeted from .338 (which likely was too high to be sustainable) to .263. The real problem of course is how much his power has fallen off from '05/'06, and his stagnant K-W ratio.

The real problem of course is how much his power has fallen off from '05/'06, and his stagnant K-W ratio.

Right. All of the peripherals in the world won't help when you haven't progressed since the last time you were in AA. He hasn't improved his ability to identify pitches. He hasn't improved his ability to control the zone. As a result pitchers no longer give him anything to hit in his power zones, which turns him into Omar Infante with a beard.

which turns him into Omar Infante with a beard.

He's Omar Sharif?

It was about three years ago today he was up in the bigs for the first time and terrorizing my poor Cubbies.

Well it's about damn time.

From the AJC story:

Francoeur said he was given the option of going to Class AAA Richmond and Class AA Mississippi and chose Mississippi because of his relationship with Wellman, who was Francoeur's hitting coach when he was last in the minors, with Mississippi in 2005.

Jeff isn't very happy either.

I love playing for the city. I love playing for the fans and always have. But I'm disappointed with the decision and how the whole process went down.

This has really put a damper on my relationship with the Atlanta Braves.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/braves/stories/2008/07/04/francoeur_0704.html

In related news, the Mets are going to send DWright down to AA. Not.

I'm having a hard time being sympathetic to Francoeur's position. He intimates that he thinks the Braves should have told him that they were considering the move beforehand. Now obviously any player who's not producing should know that his job is in jeopardy. Moreover, the Braves have indicated that they think Francoeur's been pressing too hard, and needs to relax a bit in his approach. (Whether that's a good idea or not, I haven't a clue.) But telling him, "Hey, if you don't start hitting this week, we're shipping you out to Mississippi, okay?" is not a good way to get him to stop pressing.

Hopefully this means that the Braves have stopped their Iron Man ploy with him. If he's demoteable, then he's benchable.


EDIT: I also want to unnecessarily point out that Jason Perry is a Georgia Tech alum, so it'll be great to have him on the big club, along with his former Yellow Jacket teammate Mark Teixeira.

Get your kicks in when you can, Dial.

Check out my link on the Sabathia thread for more laughs.

Finally; this could have been no part Bobby Cox. Wren showing some initiative. At this point, I will take any improvement from Francoeur.

xdog -- to hyperlink, just click on the '<a> box' and follow the instructions.

Perry tripled in a run in his first AB.

How will this affect his Hall of Fame chances?

I think his first-AB triple greatly enhances Perry's Hall of Fame chances!

Maybe I'm missing something, but why does everyone here seem to hate Jeff Francoeur?

N.B. I don't mean merely thinking him a mediocre player, I mean it seems like there's a lot of snark running around in this thread. Not sure why, but then I don't pay much attention to the Braves.

The title of [http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/dugout_central_is_jeff_francoeur_the_next_roberto_clemente/]this thread[/email] may help.

To hyperlink, click the little "<a>" box and follow the instructions.

Too late!!

Some Braves fans don't like Francouer because a) he's not very good; b) he's irrationally beloved by many Atlanta fans; and c) until very recently, it seemed as if the Braves either didn't recognize his flaws as a ballplayer or simply didn't care because of his aw-shucks handsome local boy made good-ness. But don't let me speak for everyone.

Wren says he'll be calling Francouer back up after the Break.

So is he on the Futures Game roster now?

Is there a Pasts Game?

Braves now 3-0 when Frenchie doesn't play, with 20 runs in those 3 games. Coincidence? I think not.

Frenchie needs to change is hitting approach or stay in Jackson.

To echo Kyle's point, most of the snark or mean-spiritedness you're seeing here comes down to overblown and accordingly unfulfilled expectations. When Francouer debuted he hit like Barry Bonds for a month or so. Seriously. He just killed everything. And the city and franchise went wild for him. He had been tapped as Chipper's understudy at Golden Boy since the day he was drafted. He had been hyped beyond his performance every step of his (short) minor league career. And when he got called up he killed. People - some of them smart, some of them writers for the AJC - went insane. Delta signed him to be their spokesman at the age of 22 or something. During all of this there was a small contingent of us - SDCNs some might say - drowned out by the rabble and din, trying to get a word in edgewise to no avail. "He can't identify balls from strikes." "He doesn't know the zone for ####." "He hasn't take a single walk since being called up." All of which fell on deaf ears.

Three years later and he still can't identify pitches, he still can't control the zone and he still wouldn't know how to take a walk if you spotted him one of those signals with the alternating beep tones they provide for the deaf. In short, he's still the same flawed, over-hyped, under-developed kid who walked in from AA three years ago. Yes, I suspect he could still beat out Raul Mondesi, Brian Jordan or Todd Hollandsworth for the starting position, but pitchers in the big leagues have broken his dance down. They don't just have his number, they have his entire genome decoded. They know where he can hit, where he can't hit, and where he'll try anyway. Thus the massive drop in power. Thus the upshot in GIDP.

It's not that we - well, excepting Dial of course - want Jeff Francouer to fail. Obviously the Braves fans amoung us want no such thing. But we have wanted him to improve, and in the absence of improvement, for the team to recognize that he wasn't improving. We have wanted that since about Month 2 of the Frenchy experience. Instead we have gotten a guy who hit like Gerald Williams owning the MLB record for most games played without missing a start (on going) until last month.

I would personally like to see Jeff Francouer put his #### together and become the player his potential indicates. I'd personally like to see him go back down, work his ass off and become Atlanta's version of Jose Guillen. But he wasn't going to accomplish that in Atlanta and if there's an undercurrent of happiness from Braves fans - Dial and the Mets pasties are a different story, of course - it's because the franchise has seen the facts through the hype, finally, and that can only be good for the franchise. It's actually good for Francouer too, whether he knows it or not.

To sum up, Chipper Jones is a lot smarter than he looks.

"Everybody struggles - we all do. But this is a game of adjustments, and pitchers have made an adjustment on Frenchy. And he has to
make an adjustment back. It's got to do with pitch recognition. It's got to do with using the whole field."

And since we're on the subject, has there been a hitter than Terry Pendleton has improved as a hitting coach? At all?

Well, that was quick.

He's back.

Well, that was quick.

He's back.

I saw that. So it took 3 games or so for Frenchy to revamp his approach? I gotta call BS on this.

I saw that. So it took 3 games or so for Frenchy to revamp his approach? I gotta call BS on this.

They also had injuries, but that's the reason apparently.

"It had everything to do with the four hits he had yesterday and seven hits he had in three days and starting to relax," Braves general manager Frank Wren said Monday. "It was not until we had our call with the coaches this morning we had made the decision. It was not predicated on injuries at all. When we felt like he was comfortable swinging the bat and looking like his old self, we wanted to bring him back."

13 ABs and he's cured. Yeah, this will work well.

I saw that. So it took 3 games or so for Frenchy to revamp his approach? I gotta call BS on this.

Wren:

When we felt like he was comfortable swinging the bat and looking like his old self, we wanted to bring him back.

In other words, they didn't want him to change his approach, they just hoped they could loosen him up so he could get back to being shitty instead of really shitty.

[Well that's not nannied - learn something new every day!]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why does everyone here seem to hate Jeff Francoeur?

N.B. I don't mean merely thinking him a mediocre player, I mean it seems like there's a lot of snark running around in this thread.

... and I haven't even posted yet...

The success that Francoeur has had in the past always baffled me- I've never seen him have a good at bat (and I've even seen him homer- but I still wouldn't call it a good at bat)...

Sam H pretty much nails it above.

Another player whose success baffled me was Alfonso Soriano- for the life of me I couldn't understand why pitchers didn't figure him out and own him (the way MLB pitchers have owned Frenchy in 2008)
The difference I believe is that whiel Frenchy has a fast bat- it's not quick, it's a long swing that takes to long to get started- Soriano is lightning fast from the first twitch to the end of his swing- he's much more capable of hitting stuff he has no business hitting than Frenchy does.

Frenchy has got to:
A: Narrow his swinging zone; or
B: Learn to tell what is a fastball/curveball/changeup before he commits his swing; or
C: Anticipate what and where the pitcher is throwing (guess in other words)-

A: is something he can work on in BP- and he should work on it- constantly
B: may simply not be possible at this point
C: Is something the team can help him on, how do pitchers work him, teach him how to anticipate what a pitcher would throw to a hitter like Frenchy, what count, etc...

What a joke.

So Frank Wren brings the management principals that served him so well as he built the Baltimore Orioles teams of 1998-1999, to the Braves organization. Not good enough for Peter Angelos, but good enough for the Braves. Now there's a nice statement.

JPWF13-In a few paragraphs you have done more to isolate and attempt to solve the JF problem than the Braves have in 3 years; congratulations. I can only hope Frank Wren or Terry Pendleton read this site (I doubt Bobby Cox can turn on a computer).

The Orioles have outplayed the Braves this season.

well, I guess once every 15 years isn't bad. It isn't as if the Orioles have raised themselves, much; they have just let the Braves sink to them. It's still 4th place-just a different 3 teams ahead of them (and don't fall asleep on the Jays; they may yet pass you).

No 51:

To be honest I was kind of paraphrasing the advice Ted Williams had in his book for ALL hitters...

It just seems particularly pertinent to JF- he doesn't do any of the things that Ted said a hitter ABSOLUTELY had to do.

JPWF13-well perhaps you can take the time to explain to Frank Wren and Terry Pendleton who Ted Williams was, and remind Bobby Cox of who he was (I am sure Bobby knew him, but has forgotten him in the fog of years, at this point).

As a life-long Braves fan, I have held my criticism of the organization because they've proven they knew what they were doing, 90 percent of the time, under Cox/Schuerholz. You could argue with individual decisions and too many crappy pinch-hitter types, but they generally seemed to have a clue, even the past two years.

But while some things have worked out this season -- Jurjens, in particular -- and bullpen injuries have led to a horrible record in one-run games, the way they've dealt with Francoeur sends up a big red flag. His faults have come home to roost this season and the braintrust has no answers at all. If you were going to send him down, he needed to be left down for at least 3-4 weeks to make some true adjustments. It's not a question of relaxation, but major re-adjustments that should have been done a long time ago. Bringing him back up a few days later sounds like they got a call from the advertising boys who hold the purse strings.

Wren and Co. are looking more and more like Francoeur, a franchise unable to adjust and content to keep hacking away.

Granted, if you knew what you were doing, had a young RF who should be able to hit for about league average and bigger OF issues to fix, you hold your ground on Francoeur, and try to fix the real holes. I doubt you expect people who OPS+ 126, 87, and 103 to come back with a 76.

Plus, seems he has a .265 BABIP (career .308) for a 20.8% LD rate (career high, average 19.3%) part of that'll fix itself, but the power outage is still a mystery.

It's not that he's going to "fix" his swing in 3 days, but that just the humiliation of being sent down may light a fire under him to want to prove the Braves wrong. Maybe. He's certainly better than he's played this year. And this "adjustment" stuff is overstated. It doesn't take pitchers 3 years to figure out a hitter, then suddenly it's lights out unless he adjusts. As pointed out, he's hit in a little bad luck this year, too. I'd bet on his having a good second half.

I doubt you expect people who OPS+ 126, 87, and 103 to come back with a 76.

No, but that 126 was in just 274 PAs, he had 367 AA PAs that year which generated an MLE which looked a lot like his 87 in 2006...

Braves fans are not gonna like my next comparison- Corey Patterson- Frenchy has more power and more upside as a result, but they have a lot of the same issues- Corey is wildly inconsistent, hitting 114 one year, 54 another- I can see Frenchy having wild year to year swings like that, just a bit higher, maybe 125-130 on the upside, 75-80 on the downside.

but there is nothing to indicate he has been lazy this year, or not working hard and, if anything, a fire under him is just going to make him swing harder at more crap, as he has never seen his worht in baseball defined in terms of strike zone judgment. "Jeffie hit ball far and run fast". It started for him in t-ball, and it appears no one has sat him down and explained the importance of the strike zone in any way that has had an impact on him.

It started for him in t-ball...

Right, and that is the problem. That's what Chipper is getting at with that quote I threw out above. Jeff Francoeur, for the first time in his life, is playing in a league where "grip it and rip it" doesn't work. He is no longer so much more naturally gifted than the competition that he doesn't have to work at it. Being that he has really never faced such a situation in his life, he has no idea how to deal with it now. The team is trying anything they can think of to prod him along - maybe not the best methods, but they're trying - and Frenchfry's reaction is to pout and mope and whinge about what he thinks he "deserves." Get your self-entitled ass off the bench and work at something for a change, #####.