I absolutely love releasing Julio Franco and bringing up Lastings Milledge. Franco's numbers have been absolutely horrendous this year; he's slugging .260 in 60 plate appearances, with a nearly as bad .328 OBP percentage, and a BA somewhere south of the Mendoza line. For the Sabremetrically inclined, he's got an EQA of .229 and a WARP3 of .2. In other words, he's old and he's overstayed his welcome in the clubhouse. Some see him as this sympathetic, a sort of "Look at the old man play!" type of thing. But it seems that Franco is the one who's creating rifts between the Latin and white guys in the clubhouse, so good riddance.
Now I realize that Lastings Milledge is thuggish, what with his rap album speaking of the bitches and hos and all the whatnot. I'm going to chalk it all up to just a couple of stupid things he's done and hope for the best, because the man's talent absolutely cannot be denied. He went first to home and a Ruben Gotay single last night to score the winning run, and there is no way Julio Franco was going to do anything like that. So my hopes with Lastings are the same as my hopes with Zach Randolph: Keep the zaniness to a minimum, and just play some good baseball/basketball.
Milledge, healing lepers.In other, absolutely incredible news, Rickey goddamn Henderson is the Mets new hitting coach. I mean, I never had a problem with Rick Down and he probably shouldn't have gotten fired over guys not having the incredible year that they had last year or living up to expectations (Valentin, Delgado and Beltran). I realize Rickey isn't exactly a character guy; the fella was playing cards while the Mets' ship was sinking during the '99 playoffs. But I can't deny it gives me a special feeling in special places when Rickey Henderson is around, and I can only hope that hilarity ensues.
That said, I hope this team starts playing up to expectations, they are without a doubt better than 9 games over .500 at this point in the season.
Photos from Milledge Facts and Atlanta Braves
No comments:
Post a Comment