This actually isn't another post about baseball, but it will use a baseball analogy. Allow me to explain.
In a recent blog post about Luke Hochevar's 13 strikeouts, no walk performance last weekend, Joe Posnanski brought up an old Bill James theory called "signature significance." The idea is that you typically can't glean too much from one pitching performance, but there are some performances that are so dominant, that they are indicative for greatness. In James' example, if a pitcher strikes out 15 without walking anyone, that probably means the pitcher is a star. In fact, it's more indicative than a no-hitter would be. There have been 21 pitchers in history to turn the 15 K, 0 BB trick, and 20 of them were either Hall of Famers or All-Star quality. The odd man out is Sterling Hitchcock, and even he pitched in the big leagues for more than a decade.
Anyway, I've started to wonder if "signature significance" applies to other walks of life. I'm headed to the All Points West music festival tomorrow, and while there a number of acts that I am quite familiar with (Heartless Bastards, Q-Tip, Vampire Weekend, Jay-Z), I've been trying to check out some of the other performers who I don't know nearly as well. One of those acts is Ra Ra Riot, and I was immediately blown away when I went to their MySpace page and listened to "Can You Tell." Quite simply, it's a fucking amazing song. If you disagree, I'm not sure we can be friends. Great melody, simple, yet affective, lyrics, and a fantastic arrangement. I've probably listened to it roughly 25 times in the last two days.
(My only question is, what does "I'm standing by your sister fair," mean? Every other lyric makes perfect sense besides that one.)
So this song got me thinking, does the ability to produce one song on this level indicate a truly special ability to create music? I downloaded the rest of Ra Ra Riot's album, and though I haven't listened to it intently, I can say with confidence that it's good. But does one transcendent song guarantee a band is going to be great? And even if for some insane reason you don't think this song is great, I think you get the point.
I know what you're probably thinking. There are tons of one-hit wonders out there, and none of those are great artists. However, let's be honest about most one-hit wonders, the songs are usually catchy, but they're not great. I can listen to "Walkin' On Sunshine" everyday for the rest of my life and I won't tire of it, but that doesn't mean that it's a great song, and Katrina And The Waves a great band. It's a fun song that's incredibly catchy, but not transcendent. There is a difference.
(Sadly, YouTube won't let me embed the video for "Walkin' On Sunshine," but here's the link if you're interested.)
Obviously, judging signature significance for bands is far more subjective than it is for baseball. I'm actually inclined to think it doesn't exist, but I can't think of a good example. However, that doesn't mean it's not out there. Typically, when someone is trying to get me hooked on a new band, they will play me that band's best song. And if I think that song is worthy, then I will decide that the band must at least be decent if they made at least one song that good. So maybe, to borrow a phrase from the Geto Boys, my mind's playing tricks on me.
I can say with certainty that "signature significance" does not exist for filmmakers, and I can think of two examples. "Swingers" is an iconic movie, and Jon Favreau hasn't made a good one since. The same goes for "The Sixth Sense," which is the only M. Night Shyamalan movie worth a crap.
Anyway, I'm pretty fucking pumped for All Points West. I was disappointed when The Beastie Boys had to cancel cause of cancer (feel better, MCA!), because I have never seen them before. And like every white kid who grew up in NYC from 1986-2001, I went through a huge Beastie Boys phase during high school. Maybe teenagers are still going through Beastie Boys phases, but I doubt it. Since Q-Tip will also be at APW, I figured he would come on to do "Get It Together" with the Beasties. I'm disappointed that won't happen. Jay-Z, however, is a more-than-adequate replacement. I was at Hot 97 Summer Jam in 2001 when he first performed "The Takeover" and started his beef with Nas, so he's got a lot to live up to. Maybe he'll start shit with Soulja Boy. That would be awesome.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Hits Just Keep On Coming
You know, if not for the train wreck that is my favorite baseball team, this blog would probably die. Fortunately, the Mets keep giving me things to write about, and one day soon I will get back to weaving pop culture irreverence into this space. Until then, how about those Mets?
They finally do the smart thing by firing assistant GM Tony Bernazard who has been the source all sorts of bad press of late, but then GM Omar Minaya undermines any good press he might have gotten by attacking Daily News writer Adam Rubin, the guy who broke the story that paved the way for Bernazard's firing.
For those who missed it, Minaya essentially accused Rubin of trying to take down Bernazard in the paper as a way of paving the way for him (Rubin) to get a job in the organization. Because, as Minaya says, Rubin has been lobbying for a job with the Mets organization for years. As someone who loves the Mets, works in the media, and has covered the Mets organization, this is right in my wheelhouse.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that when I was working at Baseball America, Adam Rubin was our Mets correspondent. At the time, I was responsible for rating the prospects in the Mets organization, so he and I exchanged e-mails from time to time. We are not close and have not been in touch in years, and I don't know him well enough to know if any of these allegations are true. And as far I'm concerned, that point is moot anyway. The reality of the situation is that pretty much everything I have ever heard about Bernazard is bad, and that goes back a few years. Even Ken Davidoff, a baseball writer for Newsday, wrote the following on his Twitter account: "Bernazard firing is a victory for humankind." So yeah, Rubin is not the only writer who was not a fan of Bernazard. And based on what came out about him in the last week, he probably deserved to be fired.
That said, let's go back to Minaya's press conference and dissect this debacle step by step.
1) Let's say Rubin has lobbied for a job with the organization, that is a problem. He needs to be objective as the Mets beat writer, and this would clearly compromise him. However, he's not an idiot. He knows he was not about to go from beat writer to VP of player development, which was Bernazard's job. Omar's accusation just doesn't make sense. And if Rubin was trying to curry favor with the Mets brass, why would he be ripping them to shreds in The Daily News? If anything, wouldn't he be praising the Mets? If I want a job with the Mets, I'm not writing lengthy features in the Sunday edition that discuss how Minaya has ruined the farm system. Two Sundays ago, that is what Rubin did.
2) Even if Rubin has lobbied for a job with the Mets, that does not absolve Bernazard's behavior. In fact, by firing Bernazard, the Mets are acknowleding that everything Rubin wrote about Bernazard is true. If it wasn't true, shouldn't they be supporting Bernazard, as opposed to giving him the heave-ho? And what's even more laughable is that the press release regarding the firing said, "Prior to a series of articles published in the media, our Baseball Operations and Human Resources departments had begun looking into several matters involving Tony."
For starters, it's unlikely that this is even true. I doubt the Mets started to investigate until the press got bad, and Omar basically said as much in the press conference. But say let's it's true, and the club was looking into Bernazard before Rubin broke the story of him tearing off his shirt and challenging a minor league team to a fight. If it is true, it means that the organization was already skeptical of Bernazard's antics, and didn't need guys like Adam Rubin to point it out. Therefore, Minaya makes no sense when he questions how all the negative stories about Bernazard seemed to come from the same source, because they knew about all this stuff even before Rubin reported it.
3) Oh, and not all the negative stories came from Rubin. The one about Bernazard yelling at a Mets baseball operations employee who suggested Bernazard wait until the inning was over before taking the seat of a D-backs' scout, that was written by Bill Madden.
4) What is Minaya trying to gain? Let's say Rubin violated some ethical code of journalism by lobbying for a job, that doesn't make Bernazard (or the Mets) any less of a disaster (see #2). How is it possible for a team that seems to be consumed with PR, so bad at it? I had the press conference on at my desk, and I muted it because Minaya was so awkward in his explanation of the firing. It was only when someone alerted me to the Rubin debacle that I turned on the volume. How hard would it have been for Omar to say, "Bernazard acted in a manner that we felt did not represent this organization. It was hard to let him go because he is a friend of mine, but we were left with no choice after our internal investigation found that he acted inappropriately on a number of occasions." Seriously, would that really have been so hard? And then, all he would need to do is keep paraphrasing that in some form each time a reporter asked you a question.
All that being said, this is by far my favorite Mets-related controversy of the season, so I'm really enjoying it. But if it turns out that Omar was lying about Rubin's job inquiries, and this hurts Rubin's career, I'll feel less good about it.
They finally do the smart thing by firing assistant GM Tony Bernazard who has been the source all sorts of bad press of late, but then GM Omar Minaya undermines any good press he might have gotten by attacking Daily News writer Adam Rubin, the guy who broke the story that paved the way for Bernazard's firing.
For those who missed it, Minaya essentially accused Rubin of trying to take down Bernazard in the paper as a way of paving the way for him (Rubin) to get a job in the organization. Because, as Minaya says, Rubin has been lobbying for a job with the Mets organization for years. As someone who loves the Mets, works in the media, and has covered the Mets organization, this is right in my wheelhouse.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that when I was working at Baseball America, Adam Rubin was our Mets correspondent. At the time, I was responsible for rating the prospects in the Mets organization, so he and I exchanged e-mails from time to time. We are not close and have not been in touch in years, and I don't know him well enough to know if any of these allegations are true. And as far I'm concerned, that point is moot anyway. The reality of the situation is that pretty much everything I have ever heard about Bernazard is bad, and that goes back a few years. Even Ken Davidoff, a baseball writer for Newsday, wrote the following on his Twitter account: "Bernazard firing is a victory for humankind." So yeah, Rubin is not the only writer who was not a fan of Bernazard. And based on what came out about him in the last week, he probably deserved to be fired.
That said, let's go back to Minaya's press conference and dissect this debacle step by step.
1) Let's say Rubin has lobbied for a job with the organization, that is a problem. He needs to be objective as the Mets beat writer, and this would clearly compromise him. However, he's not an idiot. He knows he was not about to go from beat writer to VP of player development, which was Bernazard's job. Omar's accusation just doesn't make sense. And if Rubin was trying to curry favor with the Mets brass, why would he be ripping them to shreds in The Daily News? If anything, wouldn't he be praising the Mets? If I want a job with the Mets, I'm not writing lengthy features in the Sunday edition that discuss how Minaya has ruined the farm system. Two Sundays ago, that is what Rubin did.
2) Even if Rubin has lobbied for a job with the Mets, that does not absolve Bernazard's behavior. In fact, by firing Bernazard, the Mets are acknowleding that everything Rubin wrote about Bernazard is true. If it wasn't true, shouldn't they be supporting Bernazard, as opposed to giving him the heave-ho? And what's even more laughable is that the press release regarding the firing said, "Prior to a series of articles published in the media, our Baseball Operations and Human Resources departments had begun looking into several matters involving Tony."
For starters, it's unlikely that this is even true. I doubt the Mets started to investigate until the press got bad, and Omar basically said as much in the press conference. But say let's it's true, and the club was looking into Bernazard before Rubin broke the story of him tearing off his shirt and challenging a minor league team to a fight. If it is true, it means that the organization was already skeptical of Bernazard's antics, and didn't need guys like Adam Rubin to point it out. Therefore, Minaya makes no sense when he questions how all the negative stories about Bernazard seemed to come from the same source, because they knew about all this stuff even before Rubin reported it.
3) Oh, and not all the negative stories came from Rubin. The one about Bernazard yelling at a Mets baseball operations employee who suggested Bernazard wait until the inning was over before taking the seat of a D-backs' scout, that was written by Bill Madden.
4) What is Minaya trying to gain? Let's say Rubin violated some ethical code of journalism by lobbying for a job, that doesn't make Bernazard (or the Mets) any less of a disaster (see #2). How is it possible for a team that seems to be consumed with PR, so bad at it? I had the press conference on at my desk, and I muted it because Minaya was so awkward in his explanation of the firing. It was only when someone alerted me to the Rubin debacle that I turned on the volume. How hard would it have been for Omar to say, "Bernazard acted in a manner that we felt did not represent this organization. It was hard to let him go because he is a friend of mine, but we were left with no choice after our internal investigation found that he acted inappropriately on a number of occasions." Seriously, would that really have been so hard? And then, all he would need to do is keep paraphrasing that in some form each time a reporter asked you a question.
All that being said, this is by far my favorite Mets-related controversy of the season, so I'm really enjoying it. But if it turns out that Omar was lying about Rubin's job inquiries, and this hurts Rubin's career, I'll feel less good about it.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Hey Now, You're An All-Star
OK, so how cool is Obama? He was giving shit to Pujols about not winning the home run derby in his home park, and this came after him signing an autograph for Ichiro. And Ichiro looked like a giddy little school girl as he waited for Obama’s signature.
Anyway, I’m watching the All-Star Game and I have to say that I’m kind of enjoying it. (Other than Sherryl Crow’s performance, I hate her.) I don’t really like the whole, “this time it counts” thing, but at least it makes the game relevant to some degree. As I discussed in an a piece I wrote for Baseball Prospectus last summer, I just wish that they would commit to it being a meaningful game. That means letting the best players play the entire game (rotating pitchers, of course), as opposed to treating it like a Little League game. And yes, I’m willing to sacrifice Freddy Sanchez’s at-bats for the cause. Sorry, Pirates fans.
But even if MLB decides to ignore my preference, that’s fine with me. I’ve come to the realization that the All-Star Game, as well as the home run derby, is not geared toward the hyper-obsessive fan such as myself. I used to love, and I mean LOVE, the All-Star Game when I was a kid. So much so that I remember forcing my father to record the end of the 1987 game after I was told I had to go to bed. I watched it the next day after I got back from camp, and I got to see Tim Raines hit a two-run triple in the top of the 13th inning to give the NL the 2-0 win. (Note: I looked that up, but I definitely remember Raines getting an extra-base hit to win it. But I did not recall that it was a triple to score Ozzie Virgil and Hubie Brooks, or that Sid Fernandez got the save. Go Mets!)
My favorite part of the All-Star Game as a kid was that the Mets wore white cleats. I don’t know why, but I got a huge kick out of this. I guess it indicated what a special occasion it was, because I never understood why the Mets didn’t wear white cleats during the regular season. In retrospect, that was probably a good things because white cleats look dumb on baseball players, but when I was eight years old, seeing the Mets wear white cleats represented status. As a kid, that meant something. Ah, the simple pleasures.
Anyway, I’m watching the All-Star Game and I have to say that I’m kind of enjoying it. (Other than Sherryl Crow’s performance, I hate her.) I don’t really like the whole, “this time it counts” thing, but at least it makes the game relevant to some degree. As I discussed in an a piece I wrote for Baseball Prospectus last summer, I just wish that they would commit to it being a meaningful game. That means letting the best players play the entire game (rotating pitchers, of course), as opposed to treating it like a Little League game. And yes, I’m willing to sacrifice Freddy Sanchez’s at-bats for the cause. Sorry, Pirates fans.
But even if MLB decides to ignore my preference, that’s fine with me. I’ve come to the realization that the All-Star Game, as well as the home run derby, is not geared toward the hyper-obsessive fan such as myself. I used to love, and I mean LOVE, the All-Star Game when I was a kid. So much so that I remember forcing my father to record the end of the 1987 game after I was told I had to go to bed. I watched it the next day after I got back from camp, and I got to see Tim Raines hit a two-run triple in the top of the 13th inning to give the NL the 2-0 win. (Note: I looked that up, but I definitely remember Raines getting an extra-base hit to win it. But I did not recall that it was a triple to score Ozzie Virgil and Hubie Brooks, or that Sid Fernandez got the save. Go Mets!)
My favorite part of the All-Star Game as a kid was that the Mets wore white cleats. I don’t know why, but I got a huge kick out of this. I guess it indicated what a special occasion it was, because I never understood why the Mets didn’t wear white cleats during the regular season. In retrospect, that was probably a good things because white cleats look dumb on baseball players, but when I was eight years old, seeing the Mets wear white cleats represented status. As a kid, that meant something. Ah, the simple pleasures.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Stay Hot, Mets
You know, there’s nothing quite like a perplexing Mets transaction to end this blog’s hiatus. I have a million thoughts on this Jeff Francoeur-for-Ryan Church swap, in fact, it might be more like a billion. I could probably write a book about my thoughts on this trade and what it says about how teams judge performance. Frankly, I don’t really know where to begin, and I apologize in advance if I start rambling.
My first recollection of Jeff Francoeur is seeing him play for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans in 2004. My friend Dan and I took a road trip down to Myrtle and went to games in Philly, Richmond and Durham along the way. The game in Myrtle Beach, however, was by far the most fun. Not only was the weather absolutely gorgeous, but the Pelicans featured Franoeur and Brian McCann, who we knew from our John Sickels’ prospect book as two of the game’s best prospects. (The game also featured a guy named Nathan Panther, quite possibly the coolest name ever. But I digress.)
On that day, it was clear that Frenchy was by far the most talented player on the field. He was a gazelle chasing down flies in right, and he absolutely crushed two balls to the warning track. I realize that doesn’t sound that impressive, but hitting one out of Myrtle Beach is like hitting one out of Yellowstone. That place is enormous, and the wind is coming in from the ocean. So getting it to the track is a feat in it’s own right.
The point is that Francoeur stood out as obviously the most talented, and that’s often hard to do in a baseball. If you took an alien to a Cleveland Cavaliers game, it would have no trouble identifying LeBron as the best player out there. But if you took that same alien to the Mets game today, it might not be able to identify David Wright as the Mets best player by far. He might strike out twice and make a throwing error, while Angel Pagan hits a double, steals a base, and makes a diving catch in the outfield. Not to mention the fact that Pagan looks good in a baseball uniform. Baseball is not a game of instant satisfaction. You need to see lots and lots of games before you can decide who is the best. Why the fuck else do you think they play 162 games?
And that’s the problem with Francoeur. When he does something good (and these days, that’s rare) he looks good doing it. Like Pagan, he looks good in a baseball uniform. He’s sinewy, and he has what scouts like to call a “high ass.” And yes, this a good thing. Oh, and he wears his socks in such a way that makes him look like a ballplayer. When he connects, he can hit it a country mile. And when he unleashes a throw from right, he gives new meaning to the term “frozen rope.” So even though there are thousands and thousands of at-bats that tell us that Jeff Francoeur is a bad major league baseball player, a lot of people simply cannot believe it because our eyes see a superstar. And even if doesn’t play like one now, he once did, and he sure as shit looks like one. Ryan Church, on the other hand, never does anything on a baseball field that amazes you. Check that. With the exception of missing third base and costing the Mets a win, Ryan Curch never does anything on a baseball field that amazes you. As a result, he just seems like a guy. And it’s true, Ryan Church is nothing special.
This is a phenomenon Joe Posnanski discusses in his analysis of the Royals trade for Yuniesky Betancourt. He refers to it as the power of everlasting promise, and that is something Francoeur has coming out of his cleats. For God’s sake, he was dubbed “The Natural” on the cover of Sports Illustrated. When a player shows promise at a young age and does things the way we think they are supposed to be done and looks the part while doing it, they continually get the benefit of the doubt. If Francouer hadn’t hit .400 for the first three weeks of his career, he would have been in the minors for most of the last two years because his sub-.300 OBP has shown him to be an out machine unseen since the days of Rey Ordonez.
Speaking of the Betancourt deal, when I first heard about it, my reaction was, “that’s something the Mets would do.” And after the Frenchy trade, I am now convinced the Mets are essentially the Royals, but with a bigger bank account. Maybe that should be their promotional slogan next year.
The problem with the Francoeur trade from a Mets perspective is not that they gave up Ryan Church. The problem with this trade is what it says about the Mets line of thinking. Basically, the Mets are saying, “I don’t care that Luis Castillo has had a higher OPS than Frenchy the last two years, he looks good to us.” This is essentially the same line of thinking that led to them choosing Omir Santos over Ramon Castro for reasons that I still cannot comprehend.
To me, this trade reeks of arrogance. Are the Mets really that confident that they are smarter than the Braves? I’ve got 20 years of evidence that says otherwise. And when all semi-advanced metrics say that Frenchy is not only below average, but below replacement level, then you better be sure you know what you’re doing, because I can’t think of any other reason that you would seek out the Braves to acquire Francoeur, which is apparently what the Mets did. Because as bad as the Mets have been, some of the guys they have been playing in left and right (Evans, Reed, Tatis) are actually performing better than Frenchy has for the last season and a half.
Maybe the Mets believe they can “fix” Frenchy and unleash the 2005 version of him. I sure hope so. And in many ways, this is a referendum on the organization’s ability to evaluate talent. Because if you’re clearly not a club that evaluates players based on stats, and the Mets have proved that they aren’t, then you better be good at scouting. (In reality, you should be good at both, but we can’t have everything.) This is what disappoints me most about the Mets, I don’t think they give a rats ass about performance evaluation. Omar Minaya might be a good scout, but I don’t think he has a nuanced feel for a statistical analysis, nor does anyone else in the organization. If they did, they wouldn’t have chosen Santos over Castro, and sought out a trade for Francoeur. The Mets have the most resources of an NL team, yet they have made the playoffs just three times since 1988! My friends have heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again: No team in baseball (and possible all American pro sports) does less with more than the Mets.
The one semi-interesting yet fairly irrelevant thing I found about Frenchy is this, and we can thank Baseball Reference’s play index for this discovery. As has been laughably noted elsewhere, Omar Minaya praised Francoeur for his ability to “play in a lot of games,” so I decided to see how he stacks up against other people who have played in 162 games in a season. In 2006, Frenchy became just one of two players in history to play in all 162 games while striking out more than 120 times and posting an OBP less than or equal to .300. The other? Well that would be Sammy Sosa in 1997, the year before he hit 66 home runs. Sadly, since Frenchy did this three years ago, we can’t even dream of a home run breakout, because he hasn’t even been good enough to be allowed to play 162 games in any of the last two years. Sigh.
My first recollection of Jeff Francoeur is seeing him play for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans in 2004. My friend Dan and I took a road trip down to Myrtle and went to games in Philly, Richmond and Durham along the way. The game in Myrtle Beach, however, was by far the most fun. Not only was the weather absolutely gorgeous, but the Pelicans featured Franoeur and Brian McCann, who we knew from our John Sickels’ prospect book as two of the game’s best prospects. (The game also featured a guy named Nathan Panther, quite possibly the coolest name ever. But I digress.)
On that day, it was clear that Frenchy was by far the most talented player on the field. He was a gazelle chasing down flies in right, and he absolutely crushed two balls to the warning track. I realize that doesn’t sound that impressive, but hitting one out of Myrtle Beach is like hitting one out of Yellowstone. That place is enormous, and the wind is coming in from the ocean. So getting it to the track is a feat in it’s own right.
The point is that Francoeur stood out as obviously the most talented, and that’s often hard to do in a baseball. If you took an alien to a Cleveland Cavaliers game, it would have no trouble identifying LeBron as the best player out there. But if you took that same alien to the Mets game today, it might not be able to identify David Wright as the Mets best player by far. He might strike out twice and make a throwing error, while Angel Pagan hits a double, steals a base, and makes a diving catch in the outfield. Not to mention the fact that Pagan looks good in a baseball uniform. Baseball is not a game of instant satisfaction. You need to see lots and lots of games before you can decide who is the best. Why the fuck else do you think they play 162 games?
And that’s the problem with Francoeur. When he does something good (and these days, that’s rare) he looks good doing it. Like Pagan, he looks good in a baseball uniform. He’s sinewy, and he has what scouts like to call a “high ass.” And yes, this a good thing. Oh, and he wears his socks in such a way that makes him look like a ballplayer. When he connects, he can hit it a country mile. And when he unleashes a throw from right, he gives new meaning to the term “frozen rope.” So even though there are thousands and thousands of at-bats that tell us that Jeff Francoeur is a bad major league baseball player, a lot of people simply cannot believe it because our eyes see a superstar. And even if doesn’t play like one now, he once did, and he sure as shit looks like one. Ryan Church, on the other hand, never does anything on a baseball field that amazes you. Check that. With the exception of missing third base and costing the Mets a win, Ryan Curch never does anything on a baseball field that amazes you. As a result, he just seems like a guy. And it’s true, Ryan Church is nothing special.
This is a phenomenon Joe Posnanski discusses in his analysis of the Royals trade for Yuniesky Betancourt. He refers to it as the power of everlasting promise, and that is something Francoeur has coming out of his cleats. For God’s sake, he was dubbed “The Natural” on the cover of Sports Illustrated. When a player shows promise at a young age and does things the way we think they are supposed to be done and looks the part while doing it, they continually get the benefit of the doubt. If Francouer hadn’t hit .400 for the first three weeks of his career, he would have been in the minors for most of the last two years because his sub-.300 OBP has shown him to be an out machine unseen since the days of Rey Ordonez.
Speaking of the Betancourt deal, when I first heard about it, my reaction was, “that’s something the Mets would do.” And after the Frenchy trade, I am now convinced the Mets are essentially the Royals, but with a bigger bank account. Maybe that should be their promotional slogan next year.
The problem with the Francoeur trade from a Mets perspective is not that they gave up Ryan Church. The problem with this trade is what it says about the Mets line of thinking. Basically, the Mets are saying, “I don’t care that Luis Castillo has had a higher OPS than Frenchy the last two years, he looks good to us.” This is essentially the same line of thinking that led to them choosing Omir Santos over Ramon Castro for reasons that I still cannot comprehend.
To me, this trade reeks of arrogance. Are the Mets really that confident that they are smarter than the Braves? I’ve got 20 years of evidence that says otherwise. And when all semi-advanced metrics say that Frenchy is not only below average, but below replacement level, then you better be sure you know what you’re doing, because I can’t think of any other reason that you would seek out the Braves to acquire Francoeur, which is apparently what the Mets did. Because as bad as the Mets have been, some of the guys they have been playing in left and right (Evans, Reed, Tatis) are actually performing better than Frenchy has for the last season and a half.
Maybe the Mets believe they can “fix” Frenchy and unleash the 2005 version of him. I sure hope so. And in many ways, this is a referendum on the organization’s ability to evaluate talent. Because if you’re clearly not a club that evaluates players based on stats, and the Mets have proved that they aren’t, then you better be good at scouting. (In reality, you should be good at both, but we can’t have everything.) This is what disappoints me most about the Mets, I don’t think they give a rats ass about performance evaluation. Omar Minaya might be a good scout, but I don’t think he has a nuanced feel for a statistical analysis, nor does anyone else in the organization. If they did, they wouldn’t have chosen Santos over Castro, and sought out a trade for Francoeur. The Mets have the most resources of an NL team, yet they have made the playoffs just three times since 1988! My friends have heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again: No team in baseball (and possible all American pro sports) does less with more than the Mets.
The one semi-interesting yet fairly irrelevant thing I found about Frenchy is this, and we can thank Baseball Reference’s play index for this discovery. As has been laughably noted elsewhere, Omar Minaya praised Francoeur for his ability to “play in a lot of games,” so I decided to see how he stacks up against other people who have played in 162 games in a season. In 2006, Frenchy became just one of two players in history to play in all 162 games while striking out more than 120 times and posting an OBP less than or equal to .300. The other? Well that would be Sammy Sosa in 1997, the year before he hit 66 home runs. Sadly, since Frenchy did this three years ago, we can’t even dream of a home run breakout, because he hasn’t even been good enough to be allowed to play 162 games in any of the last two years. Sigh.
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