Originally Posted by MFr3shM
Sweeped by the Phillies
I came into this thread to see the Francoeur news, and I read this.Originally Posted by MFr3shM
Sweeped by the Phillies
Originally Posted by dland24
I came into this thread to see the Francoeur news, and I read this.Originally Posted by MFr3shM
Sweeped by the Philliesat sweeped.
"What's wrong?" Wellman asked.
"I'm hitting .260," his right fielder replied, as if to confess a felony. ".260!"
"Yeah," snapped Wellman, "and you earned every damn point."The conversation started there: the argument first; the challenge second; some videotape review third; and then last, the conclusive hour in a stifling batting cage. They finished at 2:30 a.m. It happened three years ago, and the night would change Francoeur's career. He went on a 12-game tear that would culminate in his summons to Atlanta.
And that is to help explain why he is back in Mississippi again. Thursday's demotion to Class AA was, in one way, the Atlanta franchise's capitulation that it could do no more with him. During the three-minute meeting when Francoeur was notified it was going down, he was given the option to which minor league team he would rather report. It was his easiest answer in weeks.
"When I got to the big leagues, I said Phil Wellman is the reason I got there," said Francoeur, who reached the majors three years after graduating from Parkview High School. "You know what? Coming back here and working with him for nine or 10 games, I'm going to do it and get back there."
Baseball slumps may be assorted by shape and size. The one-week Black Cloud Slump. The 10-day Aren't You Rafael Belliard Slump. The insidious three-week I Can't Feel My Face Slump.
Francoeur's Slump - four hits (all singles) in his last 42 at-bats in the majors; .198 in RBI situations - is the rarest of them all, one that catapults a star all the way back into the bushes. He still objects to how the Braves handled the matter, but then freely admits things had grown so bad, he couldn't even watch himself in the tape room.
"I tried," he said. "I watched some at-bats and you ask yourself, 'What were you thinking?' "
Wellman, who has since become Mississippi's manager, has a counter-intuitive belief in Francoeur. Weeks of wild swinging and poor pitch recognition have led to some truly hideous numbers: a .206 June; a 0-for-14 rut with men in scoring position; and - the bloggers really flog him on this one - a malodorous 2-for-20 with the bases loaded.
To which Wellman says: keep swinging.
"He's aggressive," Wellman said. "I think people need to understand that what's a strike to him is not always a strike to other people. I think when he gets in trouble is, he expands that too much. He knows that. But I hear some people say he's a bad-ball hitter. You know what? He's a good-ball hitter, too.
"He just needs to minimize. To me, the ability he has to get to the ball outside the zone and still hit the crud out of it, that's a gift. And just because it's not like anybody else doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong."
Hurtful 3 minutes
Though Francoeur has come off the initial hard-line resentment he first expressed after being sent down, he will still question how things seemed to accelerate in the last few days. He said he felt more comfortable at the plate during the mid-week Philadelphia series, after putting in extra batting practice. That general manager Frank Wren called the move the hardest he's ever had to make in his career did not mitigate Francoeur's reaction.
"After three years, after playing hurt, playing every day, going in every day whether I got a hit and never complaining, I just played because Bobby [Cox] kept putting me in the lineup," Francoeur said. "But I just felt like a little three-minute thing - 'Hey, you're going down' - I feel like after three years, I was owed a little more of an explanation. But that's Frank's deal and that's what I guess they decided to do.
"My question is, what if I had hit a home run or had two hits [Thursday night]? Does it delay it one day, until I was 0-for-4? I was left standing outside in the dark on that. You almost felt like they had made [their minds] up before the game. That's where I felt frustrated, where I felt a little betrayed."
But at the same time, the deterioration of his performance had taken on a life of his own. If he was not booed at Turner Field when he came to the plate, he was booed when he inevitably returned to the dugout. Coming as it did with the club sinking in the NL East standings, his slump was no longer just one individual's struggle. It was killing the Braves, too.
"There are times as a hitter that you've got to pay attention to details, as far as your mechanics," said third baseman Chipper Jones, who this season could seemingly hit in his pajamas. "And his mechanics right now are about as screwed up as you can get."
There were the subtle hints of desperation. Like the fresh new beard. Or using Jorge Campillo's bat last weekend in Toronto. Campillo, the rookie Tijuanan pitcher.
"I was just looking at bats and it felt good," Francoeur said. "And hell, he's been getting two hits a game."
The sight of it all took David Francoeur, the right fielder's father, way back to Little League.
"When we first started playing traveling ball years ago, back when he was 8 years old, I remember a couple of situations where he failed and just felt like the world had fallen," David said before his son was sent down. "I kind of sense he feels the same way now."
Factors in the decline
In the days leading up to his demotion, asking Francoeur how it's going was asking for a soliloquy. The slump left him ever-ready to dissect himself, which was not a particularly good thing either.
Primary factors ran into the double digits. He continued to miss the repeated sequences he saw: the breaking ball down and away, followed by the inside fastball under his hands. Pull-happy, he was incapable of hitting a ball to the right side. Since May 17, his strikeouts (40) far outstripped his hits (32). His average was down to a season-low .234.
"The minute I go up there and tell myself to take a pitch, it's right down the middle," he said.
A question lingers over his eyesight. Francoeur is in the second week of wearing a contact lens on his right eye to correct near-sightedness that has developed since he bunted a foul ball into his right cheek in 2004.
The club is hopeful the contact can address the vast disparity in his performance in day games (.301) and night games (.199).
"The thing with the contact, that kind of worries me," Jones said. "Because any time your talking about a hitter's eye, that's the most important thing there is."
Francoeur's only alternative had been extra work. On the Braves' Monday off-day, he spent 90 minutes swinging for his old Parkview coach, Hugh Buchanan. On Tuesday, he reported to Turner Field for early batting practice alone with Cox and hitting coach Terry Pendleton. He has also begun talking with sports psychology consultant Jack Llewellyn.
And now it is Wellman's turn. After Francoeur's 2005 midnight confession, he hoisted his average 15 points in barely two weeks, which got him to Atlanta. Once there he hit .300 the rest of the season and finished third in the NL rookie of the year balloting.
Monday will mark the third anniversary of his major league debut, which would not have happened if he had not knocked at Wellman's door.
"I remember it was a week or two after Brian [McCann] and Blaine [Boyer] were called up and I was kind of scuffling," Francoeur said. "That's why I believe in Phil, and I have always had a great connection because he was willing to do that stuff. He knows my swing.
"What I like is, he doesn't try to take my aggressiveness away."
Within Francoeur's first hour of reporting to Pearl - John Smoltz invited him to use his private plane - Wellman had him back in the same cage, doing the same rudimentary batting drills: off the hitting tee, soft-toss and then pitching to him. Francoeur had already abandoned a new week-old stance in which he tried resting the bat on his shoulder, and reverted to his old one, with his hands high and cocked.
"I was telling him, 'Let's go back to being Jeff Francoeur. Quit trying to be careful. You're not a careful hitter. You've never been a cautious hitter,' " Wellman said. "It looked like to me that he gets to the plate trying to make sure he gets a good pitch and by the time he realizes it's a good pitch, the fastball is by him. And I've never seen the guy get beat by fastballs."
Some fans turn on him
Before he was sent down, Francoeur had trouble metabolizing the fan response.
"I can't remember the last time that I ran out there with a big smile when I'm playing. And I'm the guy that smiles all the time," he said. "It's frustrating. When you've never been through something like this, you want people to rally around.
"Instead, it's the other way. You're getting ripped on."
While Francoeur has been a handy target for the call-in radio audience, he has being simply ravaged in Internet chat rooms.
"Benchy le Frenchy," one blogger begged. New nicknames: Stenchy and Francine.
"It's not like he's just showing up and going through the motions," said McCann, his friend since high school. "He's doing everything he can to figure this out. Knowing him as long as I have and knowing what kind of guy he is, he's going to come out of this and we won't even be talking about this at the end of the year."
Or not. This is hardly how anyone might have envisioned Francoeur commemorating his third anniversary in the majors, when he homered in his fourth career at-bat.
The Braves' archives remind them that there is another side to the story. When Jones finished his third full season, he had recorded 74 home runs and 307 RBIs. When Dale Murphy reached 241/2 years old, he had 79 home runs and 248 RBIs. At the end of his first three full seasons and at 241/2, Francoeur stands at 70 and 294.
"I'm disappointed in how it was handled and having to come here," Francoeur said. "But I'm going to make the best of my situation and get back to Atlanta for the second half and do what I do. I haven't lost confidence in myself to play this game. I've played it too long and been too successful."
Originally Posted by TrillipinoTrapstar
oh good a homerun by Matt Kemp. Another 1 run loss we see?
