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Transaction Oracle— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
ZiPS Career Projection - Jeff Francoeur
Love him, hate him, or really hate him, Jeff Francoeur’s not just the hacktastic privileged hometown son, he’s a way of life in rightfield in Atlanta, where even his waning powers of competence aren’t enough to get him demoted for more than 3 days. Perhaps Chuck James can get himself back to Atlanta (2.58 ERA in the minors) and Atlanta will be able to send Francoeur back to the Southern League, enabling the team to maintain their required White Boy from Atlanta roster spot.
ZiPS Career Projection - Jeff “Garçon d’Or” Francoeur
———————————————————————————————————————
Year AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG OPS+
———————————————————————————————————————
2005 254 41 77 20 1 14 45 11 58 3 .303 .342 .555 126
2006 621 83 169 24 6 29 103 23 132 1 .272 .308 .470 87
2007 642 84 188 40 0 19 105 42 129 5 .293 .341 .444 103
2008 625 76 154 35 3 17 81 36 119 0 .246 .298 .394 78
2009 628 77 163 35 2 18 87 36 126 2 .260 .308 .408 85
2010 602 77 162 34 2 18 86 36 115 1 .269 .319 .422 91
2011 554 70 145 31 2 16 77 32 109 0 .262 .311 .409 86
2012 481 60 126 27 2 13 66 29 91 0 .262 .313 .403 85
2013 375 47 100 21 1 9 50 23 70 0 .266 .318 .405 87
2014 316 40 84 18 1 8 43 20 62 0 .266 .320 .411 89
2015 273 35 73 16 1 7 37 18 51 0 .268 .323 .413 90
2016 225 29 60 13 1 5 30 15 42 0 .268 .325 .406 89
2017 170 22 45 10 1 4 22 11 31 0 .265 .323 .395 86
2018 124 16 33 7 1 3 16 8 23 0 .263 .323 .393 86
———————————————————————————————————————
Total 5890 757 1579 332 24 179 849 339 1159 12 .268 .317 .424 91
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Dan Szymborski
Posted: July 09, 2008 at 07:34 PM | 93 comment(s)
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1. Mike Emeigh-- MWE
I wa slooking at his BBREF comps, main probklem? They were all better than Frenchy, it's just unusual for someone to compile so many ribbies at such a young age, to have such a low OPS+....
Through 23 Frenchy had a 319/76 K/BB his average comp was at 222/125
Only 2, Luzinski and Grieve, had as much trouble making contact as Frenchy, both walked much more, Grieve had no future, and teh Bull, well there is/was no real similarity betyween Frenchy and the Bull as players...
Only Valentine drew walks as infrequently as Frenchy, but Ellis had no future either (whether Ellis would have had a future absent bad recreational habits is another issue)...
His #1 Pecota comp is a player I'd completely forgotten about- Charlie Spikes- and yes, he is a real good comp
His #2- George Hendrick- I just don't buy, Hendrick didn't walk when he was 22/22- but he never K'd like Frenchy
#3 Vernon Wells- same, he was/is much better at making contact.
Two comps I'd suggest- Sammy Sosa and Juan Encarnacion (some of the years up there could fit in Juan's career BTW)
No love for Blane Boyer?
The one thing I do get out of this list is that Frenchy is very unlikely to stall out at 35-40 walks per year as ZiPS projects. I could see him in the Ennis/G. Bell mold of "RBI guys" who are actually good players. I am really having problems at this point envisioning him hitting like Luzinski or Clark, though -- those guys were tremendous hitters -- or having a career that looks anything like Harold Baines' at all.
Actually since Jason Perry was called up for Francouer the Braves maintained their "white guys from greater Atlanta" number and improved it once Frenchy came back up.
McCann is from Athens though.
Ah yes, forgot about that.
It's over an hour away. Personally I wouldn't call that close.
I know. I live there.
The story is that Omar Infante, Manny Acosta, and Jeff Bennett all had to go on the DL at the same time, and the Braves needed three more players. They chose Brent Lillibridge, Vladimir Nunez, and Francoeur. In a "win now" way, Francoeur was the best choice for a position player, since he was probably the best major league player in their minor league system. However, I don't think they did his development any favors by calling him back up so quickly.
It's annoying that it became such a big deal for the Braves to demote a young player who was playing like garbage. It should never have gotten to that point. I think the biggest problem is the way the Braves advertise him as The Franchise.
Sorry, you don't know what you're missing. I sure hope you don't prefer Gwinnett.
Also, since we're dancing around some smack here, am I the only one who thinks Francoeur is somewhat intellectually challenged? Something about how his lip is always back over his teeth. Maybe he should have taken the full ride to play SS for Clemson.
Snyder was never as athletic as Frenchy, more raw power- but that never really did Snyder any good- but yes Snyder was hyped to the sky- which at the time I recalled being odd since usually scouts back then did not think much of un-althletic sluggers with contact problems-
Snyder played 3B in the minors and ~50 games at SS in the bigs, so I think he had the athleticism. He just didn't know the strike zone from a hole in the ground.
Cory Snyder
Jerry Morales
Glenn Wilson
George Wright
Eric Karros
Joe Borchard
Todd Linden
Willie Montanez
Wally Post
Joe Pepitone
Hate to say it (I lie) but I called this a couple years ago. Nobody listened. I'm not right all that often, I'd appreciate it if you listened when I am. :-)
Of course he will now go on to be a good player just to remind me of my hubris.
True, even I wasn't as pessimistic as ZIPS above, I figured he'd become a 100-105 OPS+ kinda guy.
On the bb-ref comps, remember they don't adjust for era. Having "similar" raw stats to good hitters from lower offensive eras is not generally a good thing. Frnacoeurs OPS+ was 100, his average comp's 116. The only remotely close comps there are Baines, Campbell and Gus Bell. In fairness, Baines and Campbell improved substantially and Bell maintained.
Hate to say it (I lie) but I called this a couple years ago. Nobody listened. I'm not right all that often, I'd appreciate it if you listened when I am. :-)
What are you talking about? This site was all kinds of skeptical toward Francoeur.
You didn't see those games...
Snyder had no more business playing SS than Stairs had playing 2B when he frist came up (and Snyder wasn't even fat like Stairs...)
Snyder had an arm- that was it- he was slow, he was a slow runner, he moved laterally slowly, wasn't notably flexible, whatever scout/coach thought Snyder was a SS should have been fired for incompetence
Can't get there from here?
I'd take Gwinnett over Clarke any day. I'm a suburb guy.
Nope.
I live in Cobb County which is on the northwest side of Atlanta. A drive to Gwinnett ruins my afternoon. A drive to Athens ruins my day...except for the fact that Athens is a pretty cool town.
Well, sure, but ZIPS doesn't really do that.
You mean most people in athens would rather not acknowledge atlanta's existence? If you mean the opposite, good riddance. Stay away. Athens doesn't want you anyway.
I can agree with this statement.
I'd take Gwinnett over Clarke any day. I'm a suburb guy.
This statement, on the other hand, was made by an idiot.
The biggest dumbass ever? Probably not. Carl Everett did and still does exist. But all evidence suggests that Little Jeffy is not terribly smart, or at least that his intelligence is drastically overshadowed by his ego. I'm virtually certain that Francoeur thinks he is a better baseball player than his buddy Brian McCann, for example. I'm virtually certain that he thinks the contract the Braves offered him - the same arb buy out deal that McCann accepted - was beneath him. I'm virtually certain that he's amazed he's not an All Star by now. Is he stupid? I don't know. He's a jock. He's probably not doing quantum mechanics in his spare time. But that's not the real problem that I see. The real problem is that he's arrogant far beyond his talent.
Fortunately, no. I was mostly watching the Cubs in the mid 1980s. I'll stand corrected.
Except that no one will want him, and the Braves will insist on paying him the "hometown premium", because of all of those (non-existant) Parkview alums who buy tickets to come to see Frenchie strike-out every game.
I have no idea what his IQ is, but I'm pretty sure you can't judge it based on how he looks. Those that think the IQ of an individual can be judged based on facial expression, gender, color, ethnicity, gait, clothing, etc. are themselves displaying a fairly low IQ.
Now, I will agree that his behavior suggests extreme arrogance. Which is actually not related to intellect. I've known some amazingly "smart" people who were so arrogant they significantly damaged their careers.
However, it seems to be taken as an article of faith in sabr circles (at least the primitive ones I frequent) that strike zone judgement is a skill that can be improved, but not dramatically (or did I get this conclusion wrong?). Folks point to low walk numbers in the minors as a good gauge of ability in the majors. Folks say that walk numbers don't change much over a career and that it is rare for a guy with poor strike zone recognition to get better at it. So, my point is, yes, Jeffy has poor strike zone recognition skills. But why is this and his failure to improve seen as such terrible moral or intellectual shortcomings? Blast the Braves all you like for not seeing this and either trying to help him improve or find someone else to fill his spot, but I don't see how you can hold the view that walks (and all that entails) is a skill and one unlikely to improve over time and that Jeffy should be blamed for failing to improve or for being bad at that skill.
As to what he says to the media, would you really respect a player who said, "You know, I'm not very good, I should be benched or, perhaps, released." I wouldn't.
To me the ridiculousness of Frenchy's career/situation is squarely on the Braves organization, not him. He's a below average player (who might be pretty good if he developed some sense of the strike zone but, honestly, I don't expect that of him at this point) who thinks he's better than he his. My guess is pretty much every player ever, including Ruth and Bonds, think they're better than they are. Judge his playing ability as harshly as you like (I do) but that hardly merits judgement of his character or intellect.
"I suck right now." -- Billy Wagner, June 12, 2008
Again, I think there's plenty of blame to go around here. The Braves have a nagging tendency to fall in love with toolsy kids who they hope to teach to play baseball. It's a long tradition running through Francoeur and George Lombard to Mike Kelly and any number of other blasts from the past. If you want to concentrate your criticism on that by all means, go for it. Most of the BTF-Braves crowd will agree with you I suspect. But that doesn't excuse Francoeur of his obvious failings in this instance. A player who is hitting worse than Old Ozzie Guillen just doesn't have the right to ##### and moan about being demoted. Period. He had options. He needed to be sent down. He needed to be left down, in fact. I don't mind a player in that situation using the conflict to fuel his desire to improve and return to the bigs. I do mind him acting as if he's entitled to the starting RF position regardless of his actual level of play. Francoeur's behavior reaks of that sense of entitlement and that too is fair game for criticism.
By the way, as I understand it, they offered JF a McCann type deal; JF just wanted more. That the Braves could recognize that JF wasn't better than McCann is better than nothing; that they saw JF as McCann's equal doesn't exactly sing out for great baseball intelligence.
They offered them both the same arbitration buy-outs. I'm not sure that reflect all that poorly on their evaluation skills as an organization. Francoeur presented them with a plethora of natural talent that, if they could just harness it, could turn into super-star performance. That was worth the risk of losing guaranteed money if he flamed out (as he seems to be doing) but it was balanced by the potential reward of Francoeur putting it all together. McCann presented a much better skill set, a clearly more projectable success rate in the majors, but he also was a catcher. Catchers get hurt, wear down, etc. So it wasn't the same risks, but it was a near-equivalent risk to take on a young player like that. The risk of losing the money if he got hurt was balanced by the reward of having an All Star calibre catcher locked up through arbitration at controlled costs.
s/
Plus since they came up in the organization together, and were drafted together, offering them identical deals avoids wounding any egos.
I still remember a Braves braadcast from 2 years ago, Mets visiting Atlanta, the Braves broadcasters were talking about David Wright, one said, "he's the Mets' Francoeur", the other said, "maybe, but Francoeur has more ribbies" [at the time], the first one said, "yeah, you're right"
Mainstream Braves fans (not guys like Sam H) have, at least prior to this year, talked about Franchy the way Mets fans talk about Wright...
Frenchy came up in 2005, played well and hit .300 in less than half a year, the next year he hit 29 homers and drove in 103 runs, in 2007 he hit .293 with 105 rbi-
to the mainstreamn fan those are terrific numbers, to the vast majority of Frenchy's peers those are regarded as terrific numbers...
McCann has never driven in 100, his career high in HR is less than Frenchy's... I have no doubt that there are mainstream fans who regard Frenchy as a better player as a result.
Frenchy does not have to be stupid to believe himself to be a great player- equal or better than Wright or McCann, he merely has to be ignorant or intellectually lazy...
Get a grip y'all.
Francoeur really has been a good boy in Atlanta. If he is pissed about being demoted, that is unfortunate, but I think y'all are being ludicrous if you expect a guy who has started almost every game for the 3 years to get the bus ticket to Pearl, MS and say "oh. Of course I'm being sent down. I suck. Its cool. And I'm too stupid to draw walks."
If he wants a couple days to be pissed, or hurt, about things let him be pissed about it. He didn't try to get out of the demotion at all. He went straight down there.
There's another important difference between Hillenbrand and Francoeur. I heard a lot of talk when Francoeur came up about how good he was going to be, how good he really was, and so on. He was clearly overrated, and people overrated his chances of being a star.
I personally didn't hear that about Hillenbrand. The sabremetric community has always screamed how overrated Hillenbrand is and was, but I never heard that many people rave about him in the first place, and I live in Boston.
This isn't a Soto thread.
Although, to be fair, the solid hitters for Atlanta don't exactly look like Mensas. Tex looks-wise is a less harsh version of John Rocker, and Chipper always looks like he's got too many teeth for his mouth.
Fair enough. I found a thread from 2006 and there was more realism in that thread than I recall from that time. Still, there were a number of folks offering pretty decent comps (Mike Emeigh went with Jose Guillen, which is still not impossible).
This isn't a Soto thread.
not sure what you're saying. Soto by month:
Sep 2007 426/462/745
Apr 2008 333/427/621
May 2008 271/357/510
Jun 2008 250/327/420
Jul 2008 333/382/700
Not a bad month in there. True, he hasn't been able to maintain an OPS>1000. Bastard!!
Alas, there is a "problem" with Soto. His on-contact numbers (career) are 399/717 and those aren't sustainable. If you gave him Mike Piazza's on-contact production (367/650) -- which I'm guessing must be close to best all-time for a C -- with Soto's K-rate, you get an overall BA of 273 and overall SLG of 483. With Soto's walk rate, that's still an OPS comfortably over 800 which is fine with me. But yeah, there's a pretty good chance Soto is heading for a "slump".
It was a joke, Dial has been going back and forth with some Cubs fans about Soto.
In all fairness, Snyder had the strongest throwing arm I think I've ever seen. It was beyond Dunston-esque. He'd have made Ichiro look like an old woman throwing rice at a wedding. I could see how a scout in love with toolsy-ness could be deluded into thinking he could play SS... at least if he didn't actually watch him too long.
and it's still a fair comp.
-- MWE
And that he steals all of your girlfriends. Like he can. If he wants.
Actually, not as much as I'd have hoped.
I've never thought him arrogant either, beyond the usual arrogance of an elite athlete who has excelled since his mid-teens.
He's just a kid with special physical skills and with his HS background in Atlanta and his magical debut and yes, his white and suburban face, he's an easy pick for Braves posterboy. I wish him well whoever he plays for. It'd be fine if he could get straightened out soon enough to punch up the Braves' OF for the 2nd half.
Your father needs to add "cursing" to the list of things Maddux is/was a savant at. Nobody dropped the f-bomb like Maddog dropped the f-bomb. And it carried for *days.* All the way to the 400 sections. All the way to the end of the TBS empire.
I think even in a recent interview, he mentioned how he looked at video of himself and screamed, "What am I doing up there".
Happens to me in MLB 2k8. i seem to know what to do when others are hitting. But when its my turn, I take the most godawful swings.
You see lot of UGA people up in Atlanta if you go out clubbing / bar hopping.
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