Facing Failure

This season will be a failure for the Atlanta Braves.

Yes, there will have been great breakouts and emergences of young players, and some great individual performances. And just maybe the Braves will even make a small run and put a scare into the Wild Card race.

But the reality of it is, the team is 8 games under .500, 16 games back of the NL East leading Mets (which will likely end up a victory margin as large as 20 games), and out of the playoffs picture. Yet there are the perennial optimists in Atlanta who are still waiting for Bobby Cox to pull the rabbit out of the hat- some unwilling to believe the streak of division titles or playoff appearances can possibly end.

5.5 games out, its over. Five and a half games out appears surmountable at a glance, until you realize that there eight teams in front of the Braves, many more talented and consistent. So in my book, its time to look back on what has made this season a failure.

Oh wait, it's not a failure, you say? Ask any Braves fan if anything less than a 15th straight division title and playoff berth would have been acceptable during the season, and you would have heard a resounding "NO".

The reasons for this year's failure are easily identified, but hardly simple to remedy. The fact is, the weaknesses in the Braves this year extend far beyond the no-name bullpen (who had you ever heard of before this season in the Braves current bullpen, aside from Baez and Wickman, both acquisitions?), the untimely injuries, the woes of the starting pitching (having to start Jason Shiell, Kevin Barry, and Lance Cormier in the past week took at least another year off of Bobby Cox's life).

But one culpable player in particular that is a large contributor to this years failure has somehow seemingly escaped criticism or blame.

Call it blasphemous, but you're killing the team Jeff Francoeur.

After attending last Friday's Brewers-Braves game at the Ted, I was outraged at the support Francoeur received from the crowd. During the pregame introductions, he easily received the most cheers. I wondered to myself, 'What has he done to deserve this?' And any way you look at it, the answer is hardly anything. For three months last summer he electrified a mediocre Braves team into the playoffs. Unfortunately, at the end of that season he began to morph from the .300 hitting, Atlanta's savior Jeff Francoeur, into the never on base, most overrated Brave Jeff Francoeur.

The young right fielder has done one thing well this season for the Braves, and I will give him his due for that: he is clutch. He's top 3 in the majors in 2-out hits, and at the game I attended he actually hit a walkoff double to win it in the ninth.

However, over the course of a 162 game season, Jeff Francoeur is absolutely crushing the Braves. He has the 4th worst on base percentage in all of baseball at .281. That's right, out of players qualified with enough at-bats (and Francoeur has the most of any Brave) he has the 168th best OBP out of 171. To that in perspective, .281 is more than 70 points lower than Eric Chavez (.354), who is having one of the worst seasons of his long career.

To put that further in perspective, he's almost 50 point behind Seattle's Yuniesky Betancourt? 'Who the hell is Yuniesky Betancourt?', you may ask. My answer? Probably not the most popular player on the Mariners.

In a lot of ways, it's not Jeff Francoeur's fault. He was hyped into the Brave's present and future star during a freakish debut last year. He's a home-town hero who would get a lot of support even if he struggled. He's a very attractive man that encourages cheers from every woman at the ballpark. But as they say, "with great power comes great responsibility", and right now Francoeur isn't living up to the cheers.

I'm sure down the road Jeff Francoeur will prosper. He'll become an All-Star, maybe even an MVP candidate, and continue to be adored in Atlanta. But this season, he's a large part of why the Braves are failing.

As fans, let's stop worshipping a player who is underperforming (at least according to his popularity) and give praise to Bobby Cox, Andruw and Chipper Jones, Brian McCann, Adam LaRoche, and the other deserving Braves who have helped keep the club alive during this painful year.