All winter and spring, media outlets covering the Braves could be counted on to run 2-3 “this looks like the year Jeff Francoeur puts it all together articles” a week These articles continued even as the season wore on and it because obvious that Francoeur was not putting it all together. Really, it wasn’t until almost the very end of his tenure with the Braves that anyone started writing about just how awful a year the guy was putting together, and even then it was understated.
The good press continues for Jeffy in New York:
His latest performance, two hits in the Mets’ 5-1 victory Sunday,
put his batting average with the Mets at .300 in 100 at-bats. Francoeur
has played in 26 games since being acquired from the Braves for Ryan
Church and has gone hitless in merely seven of them–and never in more
than two straight. He drove in 19 runs in his first 20 games after the
trade. And he has provided the aggressive and strong-armed defense that
Mets had anticipated.
What the article doesn’t mention is that this one-month performance — which is substantially above anything he has accomplished in the past three seasons — still falls short of what one could expect from the average right fielder given his continued lack of plate discipline and meager power. His last month is nothing more than a modest blip on what is a continued unspectacular radar.
And the kicker: because it’s being portrayed as something special — because Francoeur represents mediocrity in a season of horrors — it’s probably going to cause the Mets to offer this guy a long term deal.
Whatever Francoeur is playing his publicist, he should triple it.
