After reading this article, I'm concerned about an eventual Jeff Francoeur comeback special. Before Fox tries to buy any rights, let's look at this with a critical eye.
Francoeur, however, batted just .245 after his three-day cameo in Double A, a marginal improvement over his .234 average before he was sent down. He finished the year at .239 with 11 home runs, both career lows, and the second-lowest on-base percentage (.294) and sixth-lowest OPS (.653) in the major leagues.
Do you know what Francoeur also did? He had his lowest ISO of his career (.120) a number that has steadily dropped since he burst on the scene in 2005. In four years, his isolated power is now HALF of what it started out as. Francoeur's only saving grace? His expected BABIP was 50 points over his actual (.277), so he actually had a little bit of bad luck to start out. Francoeur has historically kept his LD% fairly consistent, pushing around the high 19, low 20 mark, but he has yet to have a reliable BABIP, either overshooting it or underperforming by a solid .30 magnitude.
"Last year, I didn't enjoy going to the park as much," he said. "It was just a mental thing, one thing after another. I was trying new stances and it wasn't working. I was just grinding out at-bats and coming home frustrated."
Unfortunately for you, Jeff, it's not like you were great at grinding out at bats before 2008 anyway. Your highest OBP in a season was .338, in a year you hit .293 on the season. Players that peak at a 6% walk rate don't often succeed unless they are quite adept at avoiding strikeouts (Ichiro 6.9 BB%, 7.9 K%), or have ridiculous power (Ryan Braun)
It was a far cry from his 2005 debut, when he batted .300/.336./.549 in 70 games. The fateful cover of SI had called him "The Natural" and asked, "Can anyone be this good?"
Unless your name is Ryan Braun and you're hitting 40+ bombs over the course of a full season, then no, you can't be too good with a .336 OBP. That was the fault of SI to jump on a guy's first 70 games and anoint him a superstar. Not like other papers have done similar things.
As it turned out, even Francoeur was not that good. Although he had 29 home runs and 103 RBIs in his first full season in 2006, he posted an astonishingly low .293 on-base percentage, due mostly to drawing only 23 walks in 686 plate appearances. In 2007, his average rose by 33 points, to .293, but his power dropped to 19 home runs.Okay, to be honest,I'm a little shocked. Not as much gushing about a comeback as I would have thought. Regardless, this article serves a good purpose to us all. Many times you'll see people trying to pull comebacks out of nowhere, either with feel-good articles or pointless conjecture. It's easy to get caught up in the hype over a small sample size of good production and write off the overwhelming bad data.
Over the next two months, we'll be targeting more players like this as they come down the fantasy pipeline, to make sure you don't make a similar mistake. Anybody who selected Hunter Pence early last year (or wasted a late-round keeper pick on him... sigh) will be excited.
As one of those faithful fantasy baseball players, if I find a player I like, that "diamond in the rough" if you will, I find myself believing more and more that they'll keep on doing good. I convinced myself that Francoeur would come back (they always say, once you show the skills, you own them). Last year I played it smart and at least left him to a late-to-end round draft pick in a league, even a FA addition later on in another... But I think until he leaves Atlanta, he won't be any good. And no, that has nothing to do with his complaining about the stadium. Sometimes, the best way for a player to "Revitalize" his career is a change in venue/coaches.
ReplyDeleteJust ask Kevin and my addiction to Michael Young. =P At least THAT'S over with.
This is what I did last year with Pence. I had a love affair with him because I drafted him and nailed his 2007 rookie season.
ReplyDeleteInstead of smartly using my keeper selection on Holliday (3) or Prince (5), I opted for Pence at 16. I figured he's be the best risk due to his draft value, but that was also while ignoring his ridiculous BABIP and horrid walk rates.
Yeah, it's hard to ignore those players who are hyped as a 5-tool superstar. I held on to Pence for a long while, convincing myself that "I had the bench space". It's horrible when your keeper picks flop like that (as a previous comment of mine said, I signed Rickie Weeks and Chris Young [OF] to 1-year contracts myself. Talk about agony!).
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