Jeff Franceour and Bengie Molina, champions

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All I know is Mets fans blast Frenchy and Molina on Twitter, but these guys are contributing to a team on verge of WS. Who is the real joke?

– Mike Silva, via Twitter.

Food metaphor:

Anyone remember the SNL parody commercials for the KFC Shredder? I can’t find the video online, but the gag was that KFC was selling — and marketing — a big heap of shredded iceberg lettuce and mayo, served in a bag. Hilarious stuff.

What Mike is saying in the Tweet above is sort of like suggesting that you shouldn’t laugh at the Shredder commercials if you enjoy any other food that incorporates iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise.

Neither iceberg lettuce nor mayonnaise is a particularly valuable ingredient, but iceberg lettuce can add a little crunch to a sandwich and mayonnaise provides the foundation for many tasty dressings.

Plenty of good meals include iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise, but the idea of a meal of just iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise is still laughable. You see where this is going, right?

I am a Mets fan sometimes known to blast Jeff Francoeur and Bengie Molina on Twitter, but I certainly never suggested that Francoeur and Molina can’t be on a good team — only that teams looking to win ballgames could do better than to serve up the pair as featured players.

When I blast Francoeur, it is partly because the Mets gave him 400 at-bats as their everyday right-fielder (and mostly because of his press), never because the Rangers used him as a right-handed platoon bat and defensive replacement — a role he’s much better suited to fill — in 15 games in the stretch run.

And when I argued against the Mets giving Bengie Molina the two-year deal he sought last offseason, I never said that having Bengie Molina and winning games are mutually exclusive, only that smart teams would stand to win more games by not giving Molina a multi-year deal. Neither the Rangers nor the Giants — two teams that featured Bengie Molina this season — felt it was appropriate to lock him up through 2011. The Mets didn’t either, thankfully.

The Rangers can include Frenchy and Molina — the iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise of baseball players — on their World Series menu because the rest of their roster is stocked with steak, lobster and Cliff Lee.

UPDATE: Josh found the video. Here it is:

24 thoughts on “Jeff Franceour and Bengie Molina, champions”

  2. The real joke (beyond Silva, for that ridiculous comment) is Brian Sabean, who nearly cost his team a playoff spot by playing Molina at the expense of Buster Posey for two months.

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  4. Seriously, if you took every post in which you mentioned Jeff Francoeur, would you still have enough left to call this a blog.

    We get it, you hate Francoeur. Move on please, I’m begging you by all that’s holy.

    Francoeur Avenue is located here, not on that other avenue.

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    • I think that’s just the point – Ted (and other Met fans who criticise him) don’t hate Francoeur, just the idea of giving him so much plate time when he so clearly shouldn’t be an every-day player. I’m sure he’s a great guy.

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      • I understand that, I think the whole world understands that now. But how much more time must we waste on this subject? Aren’t there any other gritty bad performers we can write about, oh I got one, how about Ron Swoboda? He’s Francoeurs clone, terrible OBP, cannon for an arm, great smile, clubhouse clown, and overall great guy.

      • I guess while guys like Silva keep suggesting that Texas making the World Series somehow means that Francoeur was a good player after all, there’s still reason for posts like this.

      • “Ron Swoboda… [is] Francoeurs clone, terrible OBP”

        Except not really, because (especially in the first half of Swoboda’s career, before they lowered the mounts) OBPs around the league were a lot lower than they were today. (NL average OBP jumped from .300 in 1968 to .319 in 1969.) The different eras are why Swoboda’s career .703 OPS translates into a 101 career OPS+ (i.e., pretty close to league average), while Francoeur’s career .735 OPS translates into a 91 career OPS+ (i.e., not insignificantly below league average).

        But again, as Ted points out, this isn’t about dumping on Francoeur, it’s about that idiot Silva decreeing that Francoeur must be a better player than some of us believe he is, based on the fact that he was lucky enough to get traded to a playoff-bound team.

      • By “mounts” I of course mean “mounds”. Though it would be pretty cool to see pitchers pitching from atop horses. Putting Livan Hernandez on a horse would probably get PETA all up in your business, though.

  6. dont think this is really about frency or fudgey the whale. its about making correlation out of coincidence and then broadcasting the nonsensical result.

    its a nice way to point out silva’s not saying something particularly smart.

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    • Yeah, the point is Silva. If Ted should be pushed on anything, it’s why he or anyone else gives Silva any attention at all. He’s an idiot, who seems to write purposely to provoke.

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      • Bingo…Silva has nothing good to write so he continually falls back on making absurd comments that he knows will generate traffic to his site. People may go there to yell and scream at him but at least they are going.

  8. Here’s the really funny part, no matter who wins the World Series Bengie Molina gets a ring! I guess it has something to do with the fact he played 3 months this year in SF. What a position to be in. I don’t recall ever seeing this happen before.

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    • Good point. And what about players’ world series shares? If the Rangers win, will they vote him a full winner’s share, while the Giants vote him a partial loser’s share?

      But Silva cannot deny that pound for pound, Molina is one of the worse players in baseball.

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