RF Jeff Francoeur

The subject of many a discussion in the baseball world. You either love him or hate him. You either think he'll improve or he'll flame out. I love him and I think he'll improve.

From what I've seen and read, the people who think that Francoeur will flame out rely heavily on sabermetrics and cite his low slugging percentage, his impatience at the plate and the sheer number of outs he made in 2006 (507, 3rd in the NL). However, sabermetrics also relies on a traditional method of player progression of talent and output:

1. The player improves steadily until age 28.
2. The player peaks from age 28 to 30.
3. The player steadily declines after age 30.

Those who criticize him seem to toss this progression out for Frenchy, and he's only 23 years old!

BP: .284, 26 HR, 81 RBI, .825 OPS, 6 SB
BJH: .276, 31 HR, 111 RBI, .803 OPS, 4 SB
RW: .278, 28 HR, 97 RBI, .810 OPS, 3 SB
SN: .277, 31 HR, 107 RBI, .788 OPS, 1 SB

Look at all these pretty projections. Everyone would kill to have this kind of stuff out of a 23-year old kid. But I'm going to add something to it:

Sam's Projection: .287, 35 HR, 120 RBI, .852 OPS, 15 SB

Yes, fifteen stolen bases. Francoeur is a better base-runner than people think he is. That will become an asset for him. I can gaurantee that y'all will see a new and improved Frenchy this season.