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Transaction Oracle — A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen Friday, July 10, 2009Mets - “Acquired” FrancoeurNew York Mets - Acquired OF Delta Airlines® Presents Jeff Francoeur from the Atlanta Braves for OF Ryan Church.
I like trades that are easy to dissect.
Ryan Church is a better baseball player than Jeff Francoeur. Ryan Church is overwhelmingly likely to always be a better player than Jeff Francoeur. I am amazed that Dayton Moore only did the second-dumbest thing today.
Ryan Church upgrades the Braves outfield. Ryan Church increases the chances that the Braves will win the NL East in any season that the team plays Ryan Church at the expense of Jeff Francoeur.
Jeff Francoeur downgrades the Mets outfield. Jeff Francoeur increases the chance that the Mets will not win the NL East in any season that the team plays Jeff Francoeur at the expense of Ryan Church. Or possibly a galvanized metal garbage can. When was the last time your garbage can swung at a slider halfway to Peoria? Francoeur actually might be good enough to play for the Peoria Chiefs.
If you made a trade this one-sided with your little brother as a child, you parents would instantly negate the trade and send you to your room. It’s like giving your little brother an empty can of Fanta for his Boba Fett. Now, Ryan Church isn’t as awesome as Boba Fett, but I don’t have to pay a million dollars to an empty can of Fanta either. Ryan Church is not a star, but I wouldn’t trade minor-league shortstop David Church for Francoeur either and he’s a player I just made up.
FRANK WREN GO TO YOUR ROOM AND DONT LET ME CATCH YOU PLAYING HALO!
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Yes.
I hope you're kidding about this. Aren't you supposed to pay to get rid of Frenchy?
Hilarious, but true.
I wish I died yesterday!
.325/.375/.575
Because the universe likes to #### with us.
Because the Mets hate Church.
The funny thing is that as bad as Church has been this year, he's been better than Frenchy. He was better than Frenchy last year. He's been better than Frenchy his whole career. Granted the ages of the two players make it possible that this trade ends up looking bad after the fact.
I suppose it's possible that Frenchy learns the strikezone at some point, but I wouldn't want to be the team that watches him try.
I suppose it could happen. Who (except Doug Melvin, I guess) could have seen Gabe Kapler's last 2 seasons coming? (2008 and 2009 OPS+: 117 & 118, after being retired for a year and putting up numbers of 75, 85, 77, 65, and 77 during the preceding 5 seasons.) I don't think I would bet on Frenchy doing that though (of course, he already did it once so maybe I shouldn't rule it out).
Which is it? ESPN and the other thread said the Mets are receiving cash. Though I didn't know the Mets needed it.
a) 8 years old, or
b) 68 years old,
this is still a good trade for the Braves.
UPDATE: Wait a second! Ryan Church was traded to the Mets from Washington for...Lastings Milledge!
There are no two players during the 2009 season that have received disproportionate attention at BBTF than Milledge and Francoeur...and Ryan Church was traded, at different times, for each of them?!
That is f####d up!
EDIT: Sorry, Lassus posted an earlier and more accurate version of this joke in the main thread. (I picked Shines 'cuz his name is awesome & I didn't want to look up who the Mets' hitting coach is.)
I don't know that I would go that far, but I did say on the other therad that the reaction to this seems over-the-top-snarky-crazy. I could see it when the Mets traded Kazmir for Zambrano and Peterson made his comically arrogant statement, but not for this.
Francoeur lighting it up for the rest of the season would accomplish no such thing. A trade is either smart at the time it is made, or it is not. If I trade Tim Lincecum for Jeff Suppan and Lincecum suddenly turns into Adam Eaton while Suppan "lights it up" for the rest of the year, it still doesn't make my decision a good one.
I guess the Mets aren't selling genes here.
And given the current state of the Mets outfield, this was nearly impossible.
Now I have to go find out what Dayton Moore did.
That would make the trade worse since there is no way he'd get cut or benched next year.
I can't see anyone this side of Dayton Moore being as stupid as Minaya....
Ok, maybe like Angel Pagan. But that's it.
Church was getting killed by lefties this year. The Braves will platoon him with Diaz and I'll bet his numbers will look pretty good by season end.
Pretty much.
Serious question:
Is the 2007 Francoeur, a guy who puts up a 100 OPS+ and averagish defensively a player you want on your team? He is pretty durable. If he could rebound that fair, would you want him on your time.
Who's an example of a guy like Francoeur who actually did turn it around, though? Francoeur is 25, put up an OPS+ of 72 at age 24 and has followed that up with a 68 at age 25. Not everybody gets better from age 25 to age 28, and even if Francoeur does get better, how much better do you think he'll be? Some guys peak early on pure athletic talent and never really "put it all together". If a guy's going to "get it", odds are pretty strong that he's going to get it by the time he's 25.
Two examples of guys who struggled really badly when young and went on to become stars that occurred to me are Sammy Sosa and Roberto Clemente.
Sosa put up an OPS+ of 59 in 338 PAs in 1991. But he was only 22 that year and followed it up with OPS+ numbers of 99, 111, and 127 at ages 23, 24, and 25, by which time he was one year removed from his first All-Star appearance.
Clemente put up an OPS+ of 73 in 475 PAs in 1957. But again, he was 22 years old and by the time he was 25, he was an All-Star with an OPS+ of 121.
I think you (and the Mets) are over-stating the extent to which 25-year-olds still have room for improvement. It would take A LOT of improvement for Jeff Francoeur to become a useful major-league corner outfielder.
Garrett Anderson?
He's not going to turn it around. You're basically asking Francoeur to be a completely different player from the last two years. And if there's anything the last two years shown, he can't change his approach. He's a hacker through and through and nothing is going to change that.
An improvement in plate discipline could happen, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.
Why? There might be children reading this.
10th percentile was .239/.288/.367 (.224 EqA)
50th percentile was .273/.325/.439 (.264 EqA)
For laughs, 90th percentile was .306/.359/.537 (.298 EqA)
A guy like that obviously is worthy of a roster spot, especially if he has a decent platoon split and some power. But it really depends on his role, the price tag, & the team's budget. As a pre-arb. platoon OF / PH that provides some injury depth? Heck yeah. As an arb. eligible starting RF in a otherwise solid lineup who takes up a couple percent of a huge payroll? Yeah, probably.
Right now, though, Francouer's a guy with significant negative VORP downside whose youth isn't much of an asset given his service time. Unless there really is something fixable in his approach, it's just too speculative a bet to give up a consistently decent OF in Church (vs. LHP Church on his career has hit like 2008-2009 Francoeur) for a guy you hope might benefit from a change of scenery or might figure it out. You're not coming out ahead just because you're lighting your cigarettes with ten dollar bills instead of C-notes.
Its conceivable that he could hit .325 but he would never add an additional 50 points to his OBP. Maybe .325/.355.
But in reality more like .249/.291
They're not really comparable. From 2002 to 2006, Hillenbrand was better than 270/300/450. He obviously wasn't great, but he was much more consistent in his mediocrity. In four full seasons, Francoeur has hit like Hillenbrand once. And Hillenbrand's only season that looks like a normal Francoeur season was his last.
Anderson was never as bad as Francoeur has been for the last year-and-a-half. I mean, the general progression is right - Anderson's OPS+ went from 82 at age 24 to 104 by age 27 with a couple of years at 127 and 131 as his peak. But Francoeur's starting at an OPS+ of 71 over 976 PAs over the last two seasons. Even improving that by 22 pts (what Anderson did from age 24 to 27), he's still only at 93, for a SLG-heavy corner outfielder.
That's a comp that looks reasonable statistically. Armas was truly, truly terrible at age 24 with an OPS+ of 51 in 1978 and he was legitimately good at ages 26 and 27.
I do agree, though, that's his upside, not his most likely outcome. It's one thing to have a bad season when you're young and bounce back from it and have a decent, perhaps even great, career. But Francoeur's managed to follow up his bad season with one just as bad that makes it far more likely that this is just what his true talent level really is. And I don't think 25 year-olds typically find a new "true-talent" level unless something changes - recovery from injury, LASIK surgery, better PED supplier. I'm not aware of any stories about Francoeur nursing any kind of injuries or anything like that; from what I can tell, he just sucks.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/snydeco02.shtml
For 2008-09 combined, Jeff Francoeur has a line of .243/.290/.357, OPS+ of 71
For 2008-09 combined, Yuniesky Betancourt has a line of .271/.294/.374, OPS+ of 79
Those seasons were Hillenbrand's Age 26-30. If SheAAA had been in the majors starting at age 21 I doubt his numbers would have been any better than Francoeur's.
Look I'm not saying that Francoeur is likely to even become a guy who's a solid 4th OF. I just think there's room to imagine him becoming a decent regular. And the price of Church is just not very high, so unless he has a Jeff Kent second half of his career, by definition this can't be a historically bad trade. Or if Francoeur continues to post OPSs near 650 and the Mets play him every day for years.
Hell, maybe they'll send him down for a while to try to learn something.
That went over terribly when Atlanta tried it.
I thought of this almost immediately.
And Mets gave up a serviceable player.
which means Mets see something in him THIS year
talk about some piss poor player evaluation.
Cnt Player OPS+ PA From To+----+-----------------+----+-----+----+----+
1 Vince Coleman 79 2064 1985 1987
2 Mike Hershberger 80 2109 1961 1965
3 Corey Patterson 81 2335 2000 2005
4 Juan Pierre 82 2288 2000 2003
5 Brian McRae 83 2122 1990 1993
6 Mel Almada 83 2470 1933 1938
7 Cliff Heathcote 85 2328 1918 1923
8 Rick Manning 87 3227 1975 1980
9 Jeff Francoeur 89 2632 2005 2009
10 George Case 91 2593 1937 1941
Middle of the line-up bat!
If you limit it to just LF,RF you get:
Cnt Player OPS+ PA From To+----+-----------------+----+-----+----+----+
1 Vince Coleman 79 2064 1985 1987
2 Jeff Francoeur 89 2632 2005 2009
3 Warren Cromartie 96 2129 1974 1979
4 Carl Crawford 103 3574 2002 2007
5 Bruce Campbell 105 2206 1930 1935
6 Bibb Falk 107 2111 1920 1924
7 Joe Vosmik 114 2979 1930 1935
8 Harold Baines 116 2766 1980 1984
9 Duffy Lewis 117 2410 1910 1913
10 Ruben Sierra 118 3856 1986 1991
Truly a special player.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think Ryan Church can top that over the course of a full season. If the Braves severely reduced his playing time, I can see him eeking over the OPS+ of 88 he’s posting now, but I’ve yet to see anything that tells me Ryan Church is the full–time player just waiting to be freed that everyone talked themselves into post Milledge trade.
I don't think that's necessarily true.
Well, this probably is.
Neat, I've been making that comp for a while, except Stavinoha did play college football.
The Mets play in a new stadium in New York, so Madoff or not, burning money shouldn't be an issue. But the notion of Francoeur having upside seems to be based on scouting reports from 2002 when he was 18 years old.
Maybe not, but Frenchy won't come close to that, it would require a huge leap for him to hit at those rates and he hasn't shown he's remotely capable of it.
That's all true(ish -- the ages don't match up, but point taken) -- but I think the reason Hillenbrand jumps to mind for a lot of people is that he, like Frenchy, seemed to think of himself as something of a star, despite the fact that, in reality, he wasn't much good.
1) In 2002, he hit .300 with semi-decent power and lots of RBI in April-June.
2) A big chunk of the Sox fan base loved him, partly because he was young and they thought they saw a star in the making, and partly because before he arrived in 2001, they had endured the likes of Wilton Veras, Ed Sprague, Manny Alexander and probably others I don't want to remember at 3B.
It's going to be interesting to see if Church slugs more with Atlanta.
Including the shocking collapse of John Valentin, one of my first lessons in the pitfalls of over-30 players with injury problems and no footspeed.
The talent is still there in the organization, but the front office and the manager needs to go.
It may be that I was thinking the Mets should non-tender Church this offseason so I don't mind rolling the dice. It may also be that I think the Mets are too horrible to stay close until the cavalry comes and basically think this is a lost season.
I know Doc. I just hadn't had a chance to ##### about Hillenbrand in a while.
Don't know when he'll be back again...
I gave up on the season today. This was Omar's shot, and he came up with Francais. Nice.
What do the Mets do?
- Is Sheffield part of 2010?
- Is it time to shut down Beltran for the season?
- Play Fernando in CF for the rest of 2009?
- Play Murphy as much as possible at 1B and then OF?
- Let Reyes and Delgado take their time in returning?
- Let Tatis go, play Evans in the RH reserve role?
- Find out what we have in Nieve, Ollie, and Parnell?
- I doubt anyone will risk claiming Wagner, so try to trade him for a B level prospect when he returns?
- What to do with Putz?
At least the end was short and agonizing. Slow torture would have been too cruel.
Well, Frenchy does suck donkey balls, so he'd fit well in that lineup and that ballpark.
At least the Mets have the option of non-tendering their outfielder who is OPSing in the mid-.600s unlike other teams that rushed to sign said player to a long-term contract.
You say that, but over the last 20 days he's hitting .272. If you assume his walk total remains constant over the rest of the season his OBP would reach .310. Over that same span he's slugging .436. That's almost a month, which even then would be a small sample size, but while most of you guys haven't been watching him I have, almost every game this year. He's seeing more 3 ball counts, he's holding up on 0-2 counts, heck he looks like he might even have a plan at the plate. Over the last month your seeing statistical improvement and in-game correlaries to support it. He starts making contact again the power may come back. Even if it stays at the .430 level he becomes a serviceable outfielder. At the very least its not the huge leap you make it out to be, he was in a similar groove for about 15 games last month before hitting another rough stretch. If he had mantained that performance for the 20 or so games in between or had done either neatly inside a single month so it showed up better in the stat-sheets there wouldn't be near so many people complaining about this one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Frenchy apologist. Matt Diaz has hit over .350 against lefties for 3 years running and Church is still hitting over .300 on the season against righties. Even if Jeff hits his projection he won't top the production of Diaz/Church. I just thought I'd throw that out there in case it might stop anybody's head from exploding.
This includes his silly three double game on Thursday at Coors Field. How many more games do the Mets have left at Coors?
And Robert Whiting ghosted his autobiography, which is worth a little extra.
Say I really like Choo in my fantasy league. I think he's a true star and that somehow he'll gain his exemption from his military service. Say my trade for A-Rod hasn't been the boon it was supposed to be this year, and I fear that he's the rule and not the exception on James's age 33 work. I'd still be nuts to make that trade even in a redraft.
If I did it for more than Choo, now we're talking.
Maybe Church isn't much, but really, unless they got all of Frenchy's contract, couldn't they have at least nabbed something cheap, too? A couple of high A live arms?
It just doesn't make sense to go to eBay or Craigslist and offer more than full retail when the list price or current highest bid is 1/20th of that.
Frenchy will be your long term savior.
And you'll learn to love him.
I like you guys. You guys know baseball. You're infinitely more passionate about the game for the right reasons than Yankees or Cubs fans. I'm sorry this always has to happen to you.
Go Fish,
T&B;
Church still has a .784 OPS against righties (.822 career). He's getting eaten up by lefties, who he has to face b/c of the Mets injury issues.
If you put Church in a strict platoon, he's an above average RF. The Braves have the perfect situation for him.
There's always the possibility of Giambi-Mabry II.
If the Mets were planning to release Church at the end of the year or let him walk (they never did seem to like him, did they?), taking a flyer on Francoeur isn't the stupidest thing in the world. They can let him walk at year's end. If your season's in the crapper, might as well try to catch lightning in a bottle.
This is also my take on it.
I basically gave up on the team after the Castillo error. So stuff like this is just funny. It makes the team more watchable to me
Health is a negative when you are below replacement level, like Francoeur.
Last thing first, I *have* been watching him all year, and last year too. First thing last, your math is wrong. He's hit .231 in his past 20 days, and drawn *one* walk. And that's not counting yesterday because he wasn't physically available to play, because his last walk was 21 days ago. And if even if I did the math wrong, his 2, 3 and 4 week splits would be:
Last 14 days: 257/278/371
Last 20 days: 272/3??/436
Last 28 days: 266/293/392
So even if your numbers are right, he simply had a great week, which of course anyone can have. He'll go back to swinging at 16 of 19 first pitches in a series real soon.
That depends. You are correct if you assume that it is impossible for you to have any information or insight that is better than conventional wisdom.
Yeah, he's young a might turn into Tony Armas. You go with that.
It's not Kazmir-Zambrano II.
No, but it's ill-conceived and pointless and makes one wonder why Minaya would bother.
It's about as stupid but infinitely less costly.
My guess is that Omar didn't want to trade any real prospects but wanted to make a move, any move, just for change's sake. This is a team that hasn't homered in 66 innings.
Again, this only bothers me if he's on the team in 2010.
No, it's not.
But yeah, this trade makes no sense. Glad I'm not a Mets fan.
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