Woo hoo!!!!

I’ve never felt more loved and cared for in the world than I do right now. No less than 25 people have emailed, Twittered, Facebooked, and/or smoke signaled me to give me this glorious, wondrous news:

Two National League East foes swapped outfielders on Friday, as the Mets traded Ryan Church to the Braves for Jeff Francoeur. Church, a 30-year-old lefty hitter, was batting .280 with two home runs and 22 RBIs in 67 games for the New York. Francoeur, a 25-year-old righty bat, was hitting .250 with five homers and 35 RBIs in 82 games for Atlanta.

I repeat: someone has given the Braves actual value (with value defined as “a sentient being possibly capable of playing baseball”) for Jeff Francoeur.

That it’s the Mets only makes it sweeter.

I will sleep very, very well this weekend. Assuming of course I ever stop laughing.

(thanks to a jillion people for the heads up)


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smsetnor
14 years ago

Praise the Lord!

Only the throngs of pink Francoeur jersey wearing women at Turner Field will be disappointed by this news.  Sadly, though, I don’t know who to start blaming for the Bravos’ woes from here on in…

Diesel
14 years ago

Why do the Braves always catch all the breaks?

Damn them.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

Because the Braves are from the south, and the south is God’s country.

hermitfool
14 years ago

This trade is a terrible tactical mistake by Frank Wren. Now when the Braves continue to suck the entire Brave nation will no longer be be pointing the happy finger at Frenchy, who sucks.

By the way, isn’t this proof positive Omar doesn’t know his ass from third base?

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

“This trade is a terrible tactical mistake by Frank Wren. Now when the Braves continue to suck the entire Brave nation will no longer be be pointing the happy finger at Frenchy”

We’ll take that risk.

Luke
14 years ago

That’s funny Craig, I just got home and looked on ESPN and saw the trade happened, I immediately came here just to check, and *of course* you’d already written about it…

mike in brooklyn
14 years ago

shutup.  just.  shut.  up.

(watching the FOOLS on SNY.  they are all very excited by this.  mainly because francoeur drove in 100 runs twice.  his ops+ in those 2 glorious seasons, btw, were like 87 and 103 or something like that.  in a moment of clarity, one of them asked if they should be worried about the braves so willingly trading a 25 yr old outfielder to an in-division rival, they gave it some lipservice then went back to their celebration)

i hope church can help you.  i feel like—despite watching almost every met game—i never got to see the real church.  he played real well 1st half last year before the concussions.  if you get that player, you should be happy.

his post-concussion stuff last year wasn’t so good, but it was post-concussion, so…

and this year, the mets made it obvious they weren’t going to give him a chance to play everyday.

Andy
14 years ago

Incredible mismanagement of Church from the beginning of his Mets career and a horrific trade getting zero value to cap it off. But at least it brought a large amount of joy to you, Mr. Calcaterra, so I guess something was gleaned from this disastrous situation.

mike in brooklyn
14 years ago

i’m also curious:

from what you’ve written here—and commenters have added—i always got the impression that francoeur was NOT well-liked by the atl fans.  SNY announcers up here just said the exact opposite.  “he’s very popular with the braves fans…”

The Rabbit
14 years ago

My son, the Mets fan, had a short comment on the trade.  “Way to go, Omar. Francoeur sucks.”
As a Braves fan I couldn’t be more delighted.

Kevin S.
14 years ago

Francoeur was popular with the Braves fans who don’t understand why baseball teams win.

Church should be even better, because he gets to straight platoon with Matt Diaz.  Against righties, he’s kinda respectable.  Easy win for the Braves.

Joe
14 years ago

Free at last. Free at last. Thank god, we are free at last.

Andrew
14 years ago

Kill…me…

smsetnor
14 years ago

To back up Kevin S, he’s also a hometown guy here and the girls love him for some reason.

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

The guys over the bridge just laugh themselves silly over that Omar guy.  From what little I know of the tripleA scenario, Church wasn’t half bad, and even better considering that there’s no one left. 
Congratulations, Craig and I take consolation from a little more ammunition to those locals who can’t seem to see why the Evil Empire is the only game in town.

Melissa
14 years ago

One can only assume that Omar has gotten wind of his imminent firing, and he’s out to sabotage his replacement.

At least as a Mets fan living in Atlanta, the Braves outfield has gotten eminently more watchable.  Next weekend’s series in the ATL is going to be an interesting one…

Oy.

Patrick
14 years ago

Hahahahahaha!

I saw the news on MLB.com and couldn’t believe it.  I came here straight away…  Oh, Jeff Francoeur.

WOW!  I can’t believe that happened!

Luis
14 years ago

I am a Met fan who appreciates the way the Braves have been run over the years, and I cannot fathom Omar’s logic here. The Mates are unwatchable right now and this makes them even more so. Congrats to the Braves on stealing from a blind man…..

JJO
14 years ago

Francoeur stinks, so it’s clearly a win for the Braves. But I would sound a note of caution about Church—despite generally good stats and some long periods of very good play, a lot of teams have seen him as expendable. He’s been hurt a lot, and there seems to be something about him that managers don’t like. It could just be bad decisions on their part, and I’d certainly take Church over Francoeur at this point, but it wouldn’t totally surprise me if Church continued to be inconsistent and frustrating rather than a really useful full time player.

Troy Patterson
14 years ago

Does Citi Field have OBP on the board to keep Frenchy happy?

Warren Hynes
14 years ago

Francoeur may never be effective again, and his plate discipline is unbelievably poor, but I’ll always hold out that glimmer of hope based on his amazing rookie season a few years ago – hope that he can show those five tools again, all at the same time. I know that once other teams figured him out, he was a mess. But once someone shows that promise, it’s hard to give up hoping it might come back … (just talking as a baseball fan, as I have no allegiance to the Mets or Braves)

stosenstein
14 years ago

It’s not that Church is all that great; it’s that Fagcoeur is all that bad. The Dude’s playing worse than a replacement level player and his defense is for suck.

Flushing should be weeping tonight. Omar finally pulled the deal that seals his god awful run as the team’s GM. The only deal on his resume that’s worse involved Bartolo Colon and the Expos.

Pathetic, awful day.

Beanster
14 years ago

An early Merry Christmas, Craig!

Wonderful quote from the NY Times:
‘‘Plate discipline has been an issue with Jeff,’’ Minaya said. ‘‘I do believe because he’s 25 years old, I think that he can improve that.’’

JE
14 years ago

Screw you, Craig! wink To add insult to injury, this fecacta trade went down at the start of what should have been a peaceful weekend. Ugh!

dtro
14 years ago

I hate the Braves, I hate Francoeur, but I like you Craig so congrats to you.

I will now go look for an AL team to pull for and try my best not to send death threats to Omar Minaya.

Timmy
14 years ago

Finally going to chime in to say it feels like I’m living a dream right now.  Thank god Failcoeur is a Met.  Yesterday was better than Christmas for me.

And Jeff is headed to the world’s greatest media market where the Failcoeur nickname can truly become a worldwide phenomenon.  Which is cool, because I know where it all got started.

Nick Whitman
14 years ago

Francoeur’s rookie season was good, but it was a pretty small sample size, only 274 PA.  And the two 100-RBI seasons he had that a lot of people seem excited about weren’t actually very good offensive seasons. 

I feel for the Mets fans and I’d like to see them come out ahead in something, but I don’t see any indication that Francoeur is anything other than a terrible player who had a hot streak when he hit the majors.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

The story of Francoeur is a very simple one:

Francoeur could hit a fastball in the zone when he came up.  As is the habit in baseball, a lot of pitchers challenged him with those fastballs in the zone in his first year.  Maybe word got around a few weeks too late, but it did, and then they stopped throwing him fastballs in the zone.

Normally, a player in Jeffy’s position learns to (a) hit breaking stuff and offspeed stuff; and (b) lay off pitches out of the zone.  When that happens, pitchers occasionally have to go back to fastballs in the zone.  Thus a productive hitter is born.

Jeffy never, ever learned to hit breaking and offspeed stuff and never learned to lay off stuff out of the zone. Thus he hasn’t seen many fastballs in the zone since 2005.  And in fact, it seems he can’t even recognize or hit the rare ones he does get in the zone anymore.  Almost every hit he gets now is a function of him swinging as hard as he can and the bat accidentally connecting with a pitcher’s mistake.

Now that he’s hitting in a bigger park, I fully anticipate that those swings will get even harder.  Which should be a hell of a lot of fun.

Nick Whitman
14 years ago

“Fagcoeur.”  Classy, stosenstein.  Why don’t you go play with all the other subhumans on the ESPN comment threads.  I’m sure you’ll be very happy there.

Brandon Isleib
14 years ago

Is it proper to say that the Mets and Royals landed their players, as if they caught them?  Given the stats, it seems more like “look what washed up on the beach today!”

Aaron Moreno
14 years ago

“Because the Braves are from the south, and the south is God’s country.”

For some reason, I imagine Craig yelling that at his screen.

Jason @ IIATMS
14 years ago

The Mets are fools.  Congrats Craig.  My only surprise is that Frenchy didn’t end up on the Royals.  if only to imagine a simultaneously cranial combustion of Neyer, Joe Pos and Rany.

Can you imagine the Royals landing Frenchy and Yuniesky Betancourt on the same day?

Tom Seaver
14 years ago

Just another reason I refer to the management team of the Mets as “Genius” Jerry and the Twit. I think I’ll go vomit now.

Greg Simons
14 years ago

“the south is God’s country”

If that’s true, Craig, why is it hot as Hell down here?

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

God’s old. Every old person I ever met kept their house hot.

timmy
14 years ago

I thought I would pass this along, because well, it’s just funny.

http://www.braves-nation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16711

Frank Wren-Omar Minaya Phone Conversation

  * Ring, Ring, Ring

  * Frank excuses himself from his dinner with his wife as he hears the ring
  * His wife glances over at his phone and sees “Incoming Call: Latin Lover” and gives a nasty stare at Frank
  * Frank smirks and says don’t worry about it honey, it’s just Omar Minaya and walks into the other room
  * FW: No Omar, you still can’t have Prado, Escobar, Soriano or Vazquez
  * OM: Ahh, Frank, you know me too well, but today I have a different proposal
  * FW: Okay Omar, let’s hear it
  * OM: I want to trade for Jeff Francoeur
  * FW: (spits out coffee on computer screen) Okay Omar, what else do you want with him?
  * OM: Oh no no, I just want Jeff, he is very durable, has a great arm, and plays good glove defense.
  * FW: Alright, that’s all true (nose grows about 3 inches), so you want us to eat his salary?
  * OM: No, I don’t want money, I want to trade Ryan Church to you for him.
  * FW: (wets pants)…….Omar, what is your middle name?
  * OM: I’m sorry, no comprende?
  * FW: I need to make sure this is for real Omar, now what’s your middle name and date of birth?
  * OM: Teodoro – November 10th, 1958
  * FW: Okay, Ryan Church for Jeff Francoeur……..fax over the trade sheet
  * OM: It’s on its way.
  * FW: I’ll have it back there before you can blink, buenos dias Omar.
  * OM: Goodbye Frank.
  * Frank walks back to the dinner table screaming in joy
  * Frank’s wife is now even more concerned and yells “Frank, you get a call from “Latin Lover”, you go in the other room, your pants are wet, and you have a huge smile on your face, now what is really going on?”
  * FW: I just traded Jeff Francoeur to the Mets for a human being with the right amount of chromosomes
  * His wife now has a matching smile and runs to him and gives him a huge hug and says “Let’s go upstairs”

kendynamo
14 years ago

eff this.

Greg Simons
14 years ago

2-for-4 with 2 RBI = Jeff Francoeur, the Big Apple’s latest hero!

Vin
14 years ago

I officially give up on the 2009 Mets. In fact, I officially give up on the Mets until Omar Minaya is shown the door.

I can’t help but wonder if the Wilpons are part of the problem, too, but seeing as they aren’t going anywhere, that possibility is too painful to seriously contemplate…

Al
14 years ago

I’m a little late on the comment but when can the Twins trade Delmon Young to the Mets?

hermitfool
14 years ago

Now that Omar is in the trading for the other guy’s rubbish mode, what are the chances of him taking on Barry Zito and Alfonso Soriano?