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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Sunday, December 06, 2009
“Many will pass through and knowledge will be the greater”
...or so we thought.
There’s no one so optimistic as a Mets fan presented with a vaguely young player who’s given some sign that he might possibly be capable of playing well, so after seeing ZiPS projections for the 2010 Mets I thought it might be good to present three batting lines in the interest of perspective. The top two are projected lines for Jeff Francoeur and Daniel Murphy and the bottom is what the average National League team got from its shortstops in 2009. (The runs and runs batted in obviously don’t count for much but they’re pretty funny.
Let me gently suggest two things: Even David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes can’t make up for this sort of thing, and even the Mets should be able to find a first baseman and right fielder who can hit better than the average shortstop.
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1. Russlan will never be fond of Jason Bay Posted: December 06, 2009 at 06:16 AM (#3404725)I really hope that Marchman doesn't become a bitter sportswriter. It's good to be objective, it's good to be critical of management who deserve it, but when a guy starts giving shots like this, I worry that he is on his way to becoming CHB.
I liked what I saw of Francoeur last year. I wouldn't mind giving him another year as long as the Mets are willing to pull the plug if he regresses.
The thing about Frenchie's numbers are that they were AWFUL with the Braves, just truly truly awful, which pulls down the figure Marchman provides considerably. He might be emo enough to replicate his Mets numbers all year, but WTF knows?
Except that he really can't play anything but first base.
Primey
Except that 5 teams, non-Mets teams, got an OPS below Murphy's projected 734. Four teams did worse than Francoeur's projected 735 and another 4 were under 760 (the Mets were one of those). Seven teams had LFs worse than that and another 5 below 760.
Yes, you'd think the Mets could afford better solutions but the notion that having a 1B/RF who hits this poorly is beyond the pale of reason isn't true. The ones with lousy RF included San Fran, Atlanta and St. Louis who were competitive. The crappy 1B teams included San Fran and Texas. The crappy LF teams only included Atlanta, Cubs and Seattle.
Obviously being crappy at 2 of the 3 is gonna cramp your style (though having Lincecum helps) and the Mets clearly are at risk of being crappy at all three.
Anyway, part of this is that the average SS hits pretty good these days (although only 10 did better than the Murphy/Francoeur projections), part is injuries, etc. causing bench players to get a lot more player than lots of folks realize, and part is that average players are harder to find than a lot of folks realize.
For me the question is not about Murphy, it's about the Mets. If they have real playoff aspirations, then Murphy at first is ridiculous. But if they are in a transition or "retooling" year, he deserves some more ABs. He was a very good hitter in the minors and if you are generous with his BABIP his 2009 line doesn't look quite so ugly: it resembles his career numbers which are disappointing but really OK.
Cool. We'll do the same when Wagner's inevitable injuries leaves the bullpen in a shambles during the stretch run.
First, I didn't hate on Wagner's ability, I hated on his durability. More importantly, how ya gonna do another Met BTFer like that? Ya gotta have my back when I am in a snarkfest with a Brave BTFer, homey.
You forgot the "+".
I would advise against starting your cover letter with "To WTF It May Concern".
Luckily, Delta will pick him up, because those swell guys sure know how to take care of a boy like Jeff on his way to the big city!
Francoeur is certainly one of the early season interest story. Looking at his line on BRef, he's very schizo-Babippity, isn't he? When he's done OK to well, his BABIP is .336 or .337; when not, between .274 and .284.
Yes, he's extremely streaky, so he'll look decent/horrendous for several months. But, I think we have enough sample to conclude his "true-talent" is a merely crappy 95 OPS+ with his career avg. .300 BABIP.
He'll have to make some major adjustment to his approach to do much better than that. He doesn't have the power or speed to sustain .330-340 BABIP, and his 5% BB-rate and 20% K-rate make it impossible to sustain a decent OBP w/o a high BA.
Sure. Um. Well... Crispix?
That's about it.
Probably because it doesn't make sense to ignore the 2600 bad PA in favor of the 300 where he hit well.
Your sarcasm detector is on the fritz.
The thing is - there ARE some fans who really do think that way. It's hard to tell the jokes apart from the serious ones.
Francoeur as a Met:
.311/.338/.498 for an .836 OPS in 308 PA and a .343 BABIP
Murphy in his final 266 PA
.294/.321/.504 for an .825 OPS with a .333 BABIP
Given that Francoeur will cost somewhere around 8-10 times as much as Murphy and also has 2000+ lousy ABs in the majors compared to 162 lousy ABs for Murphy, I don't understand why people are willing to give him another chance (without any caveats about a rebuilding year) and not extend the same courtesy to Murphy.
Frankly, though, I'm not crazy about either of them as 2010 regulars. Still think a year for Murphy playing 2B at Triple-A is the way to go, since his bat doesn't profile well at 1B and he sure isn't a LF.
That makes a tremendous amount of sense.
I don't think you can sign Delgado without trading Castillo and getting a better defensive second baseman.
I'd go after Branyan or Nick Johnson. But even a cheap signing like Eric Hinske would likely match Murphy's production.
Probably, but why not give it a month or two?
I think that Francoeur's opening day start is guaranteed. To the point that we have all just realized that it is time to accept it as fact and hope for the best. This is scary. It impels the imagination to dwell on other topics.
Murphy's immediate future is still up in the air, so he will inspire more discussion.
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