Francoeur a perfect fit for Phils at right time
Providing veteran leadership and a reliable bat to Phils
PHILADELPHIA» Their earlycentury success over, their executives requesting patience, their major maneuvers suggesting rebuilding, the Phillies knew they would spend a couple of years just trying to survive. His early-century success over, most baseball executives out of patience, with diminishing time left to rebuild what had been a good baseball career, Jeff Francoeur was trying to do the same.
So fittingly and conveniently, if not necessarily excitingly, the team and the player would bump into each other somewhere in that haunting baseball middle.
Quietly, they are both making the arrangement work.
Francoeur banged a pinch double to left Sunday, plating two go-ahead runs, as the Phillies won, 6-4, over the San Francisco Giants, salvaging one of three in the weekend series, which is about what they have been capable of as they transition between eras. That gave him seven RBIs in his last four games, four coming with one Saturday swing, a grand slam in a 7-5 defeat.
“Honestly, what I have gone through last year and the year before,” Francoeur said, “has helped me prepare for this moment that I am in now.”
Once a Gold Glove outfielder, once having gone for 29 home runs and 103 RBIs in a season, once having elicited nodded heads and upward-thrusted thumbs from every draftnik when the Atlanta Braves made him a first-round selection in 2002, Francoeur was just about finished as a major-league player by last season. That’s when the San Diego Padres, his sixth big-league organization, felt him to be most useful only in the high minors at the age of 30.
But by then, the Phillies were in the habit of losing 89 times a season, and their outfield situation was somewhere between cockeyed and comical. They were considering converting a thirdbaseman to left field, down to trying a Rule 5 project as an everyday centerfielder, and pretending they weren’t looking as the stock of former All-Star Domonic Brown continued to spiral toward a crash.
So for less than a million bucks, they would sign Francoeur. And before they would leave Clearwater, where his swing was boosted by the wisdom of Charlie Manuel, the Phillies knew he would fit.
“I was impressed with his makeup and his character and the way he went about his business and the way other players would gravitate to him in a positive way and talk baseball and talk winning the game that day,” Ryne Sandberg said. “I think that was the first thing that stood out. I saw some early playing time and at-bats early in the season, and I liked his awareness and professionalism with arm and his ability to play right field.”
And as much as his bat was helpful over the weekend, Francoeur was at his best the odd night Cody Asche was pushed to Allentown to learn to play left, lingering with Chase Utley at Asche’s locker long after a game, providing consolation.
The Phillies were trending younger, but not so young that they did not need a soothing leader and a positive thinker like Francoeur.
“I enjoy it,” Francoeur said. “It’s fun that I have been able to contribute on the field, too. But I want to be able to help these guys, too, like when Asche went down, I could say, ‘OK, you’ll be all right, keep it going.’ Every team I have been on, there had to be some veteran guys, that veteran presence to kind of keep the young guys in line. When I was in Atlanta, we were called the ‘Baby Braves’ in ‘05. But we had a lot of older guys, too, to try to keep us on the straight path, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Rafael Furcal and those guys. Edgar Renteria, when he was there, was awesome. So it’s important.”
Francoeur is hitting .258 with four homers and 20 RBIs, mixing in the occasional start with the pinchhitting duties. That’s not enough to swing the Phillies into contention or to reset him as a rising star. But if the Phillies are a better team in a few years, and if Francoeur is still in the big leagues, it will be because one led to the other. And vice-versa.