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I agree that this was a clear win for the Braves, although I'm pretty sure that the Braves won't catch the Phillies so it will all be for naught. As you noted, Church is a great platoon partner for Diaz. Wren did a great job at patching holes without giving up anyone of true consequence.
Could/should the Mets have gotten more for Church? Probably, but it wasn't going to be a whole lot more.
No reason to get snippy. My point has always been: who cares if it's not a disastrous trade? It's still a bad one, and in my opinion, which is echoed, I think, by most here, it's an extremely bad trade. Either way, it makes the Mets worse this year, probably next year, and perhaps longer, depending on how long they decide to keep and play Franceour. What's the point of saying that it isn't the worst trade in history? Arguing for the sake of arguing?
I thought this was going to be Steve Phillips, and I was going to have to find you and kill you.
Then again in some cases I was right for longer than the last two years. I was right about hiring Randolph, and hiring Omar. I think the last time I was wrong was about Tatis. I thought he would be useless, while in fact he hasn't.
I'm sorry, for all of our good maybe I'll stop commenting on the Mets being right hurts too much.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Bronson Pinchot four-hit the Mets.
Could/should the Mets have gotten more for Church? Probably, but it wasn't going to be a whole lot more.
If they had DFA'd Church, that would qualify as "a whole lot more" than they got.
http://blogs.ajc.com/mark-bradley-blog/2009/07/10/the-francoeur-trade-a-sad-but-necessary-ending/
Possibly. Although I don't see the harm in a non-contender giving Francoeur a few hundred AB's to see if he's a different player outside of Atlanta. A lot of Francoeur's problems seemed to stem from his attitude, and sometimes that improves in a different setting. He's still probably nothing more than Billy Ashley, but it's not like the Mets have much to lose by giving him half a season.
Me too. I'm sure he loves it.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
But seriously. Does Frenchy dump Delta for Continental or Jet Blue or Lufthansa now? I won't be able to sleep tonight.
Buck Martinez!
"That's a big bat in the middle of the lineup for the Mets, what, two MVP, er, All-Star appearances, gold gloves in the outfield, and he's only 25!"
My roto team has climbed frrm 5th to 2nd the last 3 weeks and...
Oh screw it, an Uncle of mine once owned bar across from the Polo Grounds
I have fat Ichiro/kungfu panda on my team (and Ishikawa too- hey it's an NL only team and he was dirt cheap)
And Barry Bonds is gone
I'm a Giants fan now, time to buy my kid a Lincecum jersey
BTF METSPOCALYPSE
I am a Mets fan and I am giddy. I don't even care if Francoeur is totally useless and it was a horrible trade. The hilarity is too wonderful.
It just looks like they got rid of a headache who can’t stay on the field for a guy who can.
The bad news is that Church is a nice complementary piece for a competing team needing a little extra for a second half push to beat its competitors (now the Mets) and take the division (now aint the Mets) especially against teams chaining themselves to a deadbeat like French (like the Mets)
Congratulations on being brilliant. It must be tough being so awesome.
1. Church was an average offensive player (.707 OPS) who was always hurt. No real power threat and obviously not a favorite of the manager. Plus he was one of those God-Squad guys. He was a serviceable defensive player, but not a real aggressive one. Francoeur is better, and unquestionably has a better arm.
2. I'm not one of those "he doesn't walk now, so he never will" guys. Reyes supposedly was too, remember? If Sheffield or Shines or somebody can get through to him he might catch on. I can't imagine him hurting a team if he can change that flaw in his game, given his defense and baserunning. And he's younger.
3. And maybe most important. I was happy when the Mets got George Altman, Ellis Valentine and Richard Hidalgo too.
Jeff is not a good baserunner. I am a little puzzled how to you came by that assessment.
I think what really bugs Braves fans isn't that Jeff has struggled or that management kept putting him on the field while he struggled. It was that Jeff had such a wildly different view of his performance relative to reality. Sure he SAID the right things. But if you were paying attention at ALL you could quickly recognize that Jeff thought, and still thinks, he is a great player. And that anyone who is complaining just isn't that bright.
THAT is what has to be so infuriating. To have this guy fail on a repeated basis, undermine the club's efforts to win games and then just seem so sure that he is NOT part of the problem.
Frankly, Jeff strikes me as rather smug. Which is why if I was running the team I would be so alarmed not so much about Jeff since young ballplayers are notorious for egos out of proportion to their abilities but BOBBY.
What is going on with Bobby Cox that he is tolerating this type of nonsense?
Not really. Church has a career 108 OPS+.
More importantly, Church has a .822 career OPS (.784 this year) vs. RHP. He also has a positive UZR ever year of his career. He's exposed against LHP, but Church is an excellent strong side of a platoon. He also only makes $2.9M, and has <4 years of service time.
Add him to Matt Diaz (.878 career OPS vs. LHP), and the Braves have a well above average RF, who costs them about $4M.
And where is this meme coming from that Francoeur is a good baserunner? Lets put this way, McCann has more SBs and a better CS %. He is not fast, he is not smart. Have fun watching him amble around in that spacious OF
I guess people think he's a good baserunner because he's an athlete. But as has been pointed out, he's not a good baserunner. He's also not the defensive player he was his first year or two. He's regressed badly - you would think he's ten years older than he is.
Pardon? I run them just fine. You want to test me, Crankshaft, just name the time and place.
*mumbling* Telling me I don't run the bases well, I'll show him how to run the bases
You think he's been Jeff Francoeur like? Really? Anyone that says this hasn't been paying attention to Jeff Francoeur the last two years. His at-bats destroy your soul. Every post Mac did at Braves Journal included the note that Jeff sucked. He is hitting worse than Yuniesky Betancourt.
I can understand not being in love with Ryan Church, but compared to Francoeur, he's a savior. I can honestly say that I would've been happy getting absolutely nothing back for him, so the fact the team got a better player at the same position is mind-blowing to me.
Butch Huskey!
This is another meme that needs to be destroyed. All of his defensive value is in his arm, the past two years he's had negative UZRs, meanwhile Church has had positive ratings. Frenchy's range and route running aren't good and he hasn't killed baserunners the way he did in 2005 and 2007.
This is not an upgrade in any way for the Mets.
Disagree. I haven't watched a Mets game in two weeks because the team is so crappy. But worse than crappy, it's boring-crappy. Francoeur brings a whole new world of hilarious ways to suck. I will be tuning in tonight.
Well I'd say that it's an upgrade for Mets fans with your approach, but for the NY Metropolitan baseball squadron it's a downgrade in every sense.
I noticed this last night looking at his BB-Ref page. It looks exactly like the downside of a perfectly normal career arc. A 120 OPS+ guy in his prime (2005) who drops badly (2006), has a bit of a bounceback in 2007, but then resumes his fade toward oblivion in 2008 and 2009.
Mets fans haven’t seen that guy since he went down with a concussion. What we have seen is a guy who has only managed to climb over a .321 slugging percentage two out of the five months since.
I do think this trade is beneficial to the Braves, but only because they have the parts to make use of him in a limited role. The Mets? Ryan Church is relied upon to be the full–time right fielder, and in that role he’s been decidedly below average and unreliable. It may be nuts, but I just look at it as a deal where both players are going to be better utilized by their new teams.
Even now, Ryan Church has a better bat, but he hasn’t been the player his career numbers would suggest post–concussion, and while it’s funny to joke about his durability being a negative, Jeff Francoeur’s ability to stay on the field as a regular may very well be enough to close what little gap there is. People can talk about replacement level all they want, but the Mets don’t even have that when Church inevitably goes on the DL.
http://video.asterpix.com/v/8331911/gilbert-gottfried-aristocrats-joke/
The followup is even more tasteful...
The post-Escobar Church can't hit for power. Unless he revives that HR stroke, he's a 4th or 5th OFer.
I guess it's full circle that the Braves should have him.
I thought the Mets were planning on using Francoeur as their everyday right fielder. That's the same role he had, and failed so badly at, with the Braves.
Really, I understand that the Francoeur hate on this site is over-the-top and it's natural to assume that it's hyperbole or some anti-mainstream hatred of Francoeur solely for his inability to take a walk. But I'm really not sure that some of you really understand how bad a hitter Jeff Francoeur has been the last two years.
Ryan "can't hit for power" Church has a higher slugging percentage this season than Jeff Francoeur (.375 - .352).
Ryan "can't hit lefties to save his life" Church has a higher career OPS vs. left-handed pitchers (.683) than Jeff Francoeur's overall OPS in either 2008 (.653) or 2009 (.654).
Yunieski "worst regular in major-league baseball" Betancourt has a higher batting average (.271 - .243), on-base percentage (.294 - .290) and slugging percentage (.374 - .357) than Jeff Francoeur over the last two seasons (2008-09).
Jeff Francoeur isn't just a worse hitter than mainstream fans and writers believe or a bad hitter just by sabermetric standards or a bad hitter for a corner outfielder, or really, even a bad hitter for a major-league regular, he's a bad hitter for a major-league non-pitcher.
IOW
Ryan Church > Jeff Francoeur
but
Ryan Church + Angel Pagan + Emil Brown + Fernando Martinez + ... is what? Still better than Jeff Francoeur? Equal to? Worse?
Might as well try to harness his cannon arm.
I know it sounds absurd, but Francoeur is not much worse than Tatis.
Come back to me in a month. Tell me then that Tatis is nearly as bad as Francoeur.
Yes, every player you mention there is a better hitter right now than Jeff Francoeur with the possible exception of 20-year-old Fernando Martinez. Jeff Francoeur's OPS+ this season is 20 points lower than Ryan Church's. Francoeur has an OPS+ of 71 over the last two years - and he plays every damn day, this isn't some small-sample size thing, it's in almost 1,000 PAs. Pagan and Brown are both probably 15 points better than that right now (Brown had an 85 OPS+ last year, 89 for his career; I'll concede that his 6 PA performance in 2009 is worse than Francoeur; Pagan has an 86 OPS+ for his career - 106 this year).
An OPS+ in the 70s is really, really, really bad for a major-league baseball player of the non-pitcher variety.
I don’t think this trade was a good one, nor a bad one, we’re talking about swapping relatively inexpensive, well below average, corner outfielders, getting riled up about it just seems crazy to me.
I think people aren’t used to just how bad the Mets outfield has been.
Okay, seriously, yes he is a bad baserunner. He is slow and doesn't make smart baserunning decisions. Not as slow as McCann or as dumb as Escobar, but still bad.
Francoeur is not a good defensive OF. He is not fast anymore, and he misplays what he can get to. This is what I see with my eyes when I watch him. When I look at defensive stats, I see that plus-minus had him at 17 plays below average last year, putting him 30th among right fielders. UZR had him at 4.7 runs below average last year, and .6 runs above average this year.
Francoeur is bad at baseball. His ability to play baseball is nil. He sucks....at baseball.
Non-Braves fan don't understand how truly awful Francoeur is. Except for his durability, there is not one thing about his game that is a positive. All the things that made him a decent player from 2005-2007 are completely gone. He has no power any more and his arm is no longer an asset. In short, he is completely inept at the plate and a poor fielder, which makes him one of the worst players baseball the last two years. And Omar Minaya said "I would like to acquire him to play for us everyday."
I believe that Jeff Francoeur's true-talent level is about a 70 OPS+. I think that Angel Pagan's true-talent level is about an 85 OPS+. An 85 OPS+ is very bad, especially for a corner outfielder, but it's quite a bit better than a 70 OPS+. A 70 OPS+ is weak-hitting middle-infielder bad.
We had a thread recently about something that Bill James wrote to the effect that a baseball player's physical skills begin to deteriorate from the moment he hits the majors, but his mental skills improve over time and, at some point, the physical deterioration overwhelms the mental improvement and a player starts to decline. Jeff Francoeur is a perfect example of this. He peaked at age 21 and has been more or less in decline ever since precisely because he has never grown in the mental aspects of the game - he hasn't developed any pitch-recognition skills, he hasn't made adjustments to his game, if we trust UZR he hasn't improved in his ability to track a fly ball, and the physical skills that let him get by at age 21 aren't there at age 25 and, as a result, he's simply no longer a major-league caliber player. As I noted upthread, his career progression looks just like the downside of a typical career arc. He's just doing it 10 years earlier than we might have expected.
but after harvest time there comes the long winter of Met fans discontent....
Yeah, that is bizarre, isn't it. Power is typically the very last skill a player loses, and Frenchy's seems to be vanishing in his early-to-mid 20s.
Not unless the Mets are planning to make Francouer the clubhouse attendant.
Sure, but I’m not comparing him to Ichiro Suzuki, I’m comparing him to his Met contemporaries, you know, converted third basemen or players that couldn’t figure out how to play first base in the minors. No matter how bad your eyes tell you he is, I refuse to believe he’s worse in the field than Nick Evans, Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis.
You don’t have to be above average to be clearly superior to that.
"Hey guys. If you haven't already heard I am on a Delta flight headed to New York to join my new team the Mets."
When I saw this, I said to myself, "Self," I said, "this can't be true. This can't be real." And then I looked, and It Was Good.
Wow.
Perfect is an understatement.
Almost. Best. Prediction. Ever.
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