Not A Dilemma At All

As everyone in baseball has noted, Mets skipper Jerry Manuel has a dilemma on his hands with the return of Carlos Beltran after the All-Star break. He'll have four fine outfielders for only three spots. Inserting Beltran means someone who has lit it up will have to sit.

It's a nice dilemma, except for one thing: it's no dilemma at all.

Most of the discussion around Beltran's return from knee injury concerns his centerfield replacement, Angel Pagan. Pagan has been the Mets' second best hitter, behind David Wright, and contributes other fine attributes, like 19 steals in 24 attempts and solid defense in a difficult defensive position. Pagan's laudable.304/.364/.457 performance at the plate looks a lot like last year's breakout season, which suggests the 29-year-old switch hitter is the real thing.

Another real thing is Jason Bay, despite a relative dearth of long balls.  He's smacked 30+ out four times in his career and .279/.375/.512 career line, so it's not like Manuel is lifting him and his big contract to keep Angel Pagan in the game.

Jeff Francoeur, on the other hand, is very much NOT the real thing. He is Broke-A-Cola. He is the poster boy for sabermetric disembowelment. Francoeur is everything showy that doesn't matter and a zero in the shadowy parts of the game that actually affect the score. Manuel ought to have yanked him from the lineup before Beltran recovered, much less once Beltran is ready to patrol center.

Wait a second, you say. He hits for power and sometimes average, runs well and swipes bases, and has a rifle in right field. He's a studly young buck and by all accounts a good guy. What could be bad about that? I hear he like long walks on the beach and supports the fight against child abuse too.

Let's take a look at "Frenchy's" resume. (You know, some baseball nicknames are pure genius -- the Big Unit and the Big Hurt come to mind -- while others are so inane and soulless they should be banned. I just used one of those. Never again, I promise.) Though Francoeur has batted ..283 in 625 plate appearances since joining the Mets, he's trotted to first a grand total of 30 times. It's harder to walk him than Ron Kovic. His OBP of .322 just downright stinks, and it's an improvement over his lifetime rate.

Francoeur has bopped 18 homers and 34 doubles in that time, which keeps you in the lineup if your OBP is .350, or if you're a second baseman. And while he's got a whipsaw right arm, his defense is certainly not the equal of either the Beltran who got hurt or of Pagan. Over the last three years, Francoeur has been exactly a replacement-level outfielder at the plate. However, he's a fine pinch runner and a late inning defensive replacement for Bay, if you think that's an upgrade.

Fox color analyst Kevin Millar observed about Francoeur that "this guy is a ballplayer." It's true: you take one look at him play and you think he's got it all. But today's analyst community has managed to get beyond the muscles and the sweet swings to measure the abilities that really contribute to success, and plate discipline is at the top of the list. His complete lack of it is Jeff Francoeur's downfall. Jerry, this is an easy call: sit him.

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Relief Is In Sight

Computer's in the shop, delaying posts. But a Mets-Braves game from two weeks ago provided a sufficiently excellent teaching moment to comment on even now.

In a division showdown at The Ted, Johan Santana locked up with Kenshin Kawakami in a 2-0 pitchers' duel through seven frames. Santana came out after 115 crisp pitches in favor of a fresh Pedro Feliciano, who needed all of two pitches to serve up a delicious tater to Chipper Jones. Brian McCann followed with a single and Feliciano was escorted off the mound. Sean Green mixed a walk in between two outs and lefty specialist Pat Misch was brought in to face southbat Ryan Church. Whom he promptly walked.

So to recap, Johan Santana blanked the Braves for seven innings and then it took a trio of relievers to lose the shuout and load the bases .

Mets up 2-1, bottom of the eighth, bases full, two outs in a game they really need to stay in the NL East race. Would you call this a critical moment of the game? Who would you want pitching in that situation, your best reliever (and probably second-best pitcher) or your fifth best reliever, with a lifetime 5.08 ERA in 161 innings?

Jerry Manuel chose the latter because the baseball gods have decreed that a closer pitches the ninth inning, not the eighth. Or perhaps he buys into the absurd myth (I know, I know, that's redundant and repetitive) that a pitcher can get burned out getting four outs, but not three. In any case, Manuel brings in journeyman Brian Stokes and leaves Fransisco Rodriguez warming up in the bullpen with the game on the line.

Stokes fans pinch whiffer Greg Norton to preserve the lead and vindicate Manuel. But then the Mets push three across in the top of the ninth and Manuel is stuck with KRod on the hill with a lead that even the Mets' sixth best reliever could nail down. The end result is that Manuel's groupthink paralysis leaves the game in Brian Stokes's hands and relegates KRod to irrelevance.

Contrast that with Bobby Cox, who for much of the season ditched the prevailing lack of wisdom and alternated his closer and set-up guy depending on the handedness of the opponent batting order. It makes a lot more sense and never put him in a position where his 12th best pitcher was the game's fulcrum. And that kind of flexibility is the difference between a good game manager and a bad one.
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