The Natural?

Let's talk about Jeff Francoeur, the media, and team expectations for a bit. In the minors, Francoeur never hit more than .327 and he did that in rookie ball in 2002. Prior to this year, he was a .285 hitter with nearly three times as many strikeouts as walks, having played above single A for only 18 games. He did have good power numbers, and he was Baseball America's #1 prospect in the Braves organization coming into this season. The only minor league stat from this year that I can find is his batting average, .275 at Double-A, so we'll assume everything else was similar to his career minor league stats. Since his call-up on July 7th he's hitting .350 with 10 homers and 30 RBIs with an OPS of 1.037. He's been compared to Vlad Guerrero as a "free swinger" but his 29 strikeouts and 2 walks (at least one of which was intentional) are downright Randall Simon-esque. His splits aren't that impressive either. He's only hitting .286 against righties, while hitting a whopping .500 against lefties. He's on the cover of SportsIllustrated and the entire whole of the national media sounds like Paul Meyer when then salivate over him. I'm not trying to sound jealous, but judging by his minor league stats, the Braves better not be pinning their post-season hopes on him keeping up this pace of play.

So where's my point? It's a pretty simple one. If this guy was a Pirate, we'd be saying "Well, he's only a .280 hitter in the minors. He doesn't walk at all. Don't believe the hype on this guy, the other shoe is coming." Not only would we be saying that, all of the national media would be saying the same thing. The best Pirate comparison I can think to make is to Chris Duffy, simply because he's the only rookie hitter of ours off to a start that's viewed as way over his head (though he's four years younger than Duff-Man). Duffy actually hit for a higher career average in the minors (again, 4 years older) and his strikeout/walk ratio was closer to 2:1 than Francoeur's nearly 3:1. It's true he doesn't have a ton of power, but both guys are great fielding outfielders. The thing is, there's no one that expects Duffy to keep up his .341 pace but there are people comparing Francoeur to Willie McCovey. That's like expecting Zach Duke to pitch like Greg Maddux from now until he's 30 (and Duke has much better career minor league numbers than Francoeur did, at a much closer age than Duffy). Instead, everyone thinks we should shut him down before we have to send him to Birmingham to go see Dr. Andrews. Why? Mostly because he's a Pirate and Pirate pitching prospects get hurt. If Duke (or Duffy, or even Eldred who's been bashing the ball beyond our wildest dreams since his callup) were Braves, the scale of perception would be entirely different. Should it be? Francoeur might turn out to be McCovey, Duke might turn out to be the lefty Maddux, Duffy might be Juan Pierre or someone similar (see, there we go again, despite his start my best personal hope for Duffy is for him to turn out like a career .304 hitter). Then again, they all might not. I suppose the real question is what kind of influence the organization they play for will have on them. I guess we'll find out.