Jeff Francoeur knows what it's like to have high expectations placed upon a player. Once dubbed "The Natural" on the cover of a 2005 issue of Sports Illustrated, Francoeur is someone who had high expectations for his career from the very start. Coming up with the Atlanta Braves, Francoeur was a top prospect that much of Major League Baseball thought for sure was headed for stardom.
After stints with the Braves, Mets, and Royals, Francoeur had to claw his way to the major leagues last season with the Padres after spending most of the season in AAA. Francoeur joined the Phillies, and while some (including myself) were skeptical of his place on the Phillies roster, Francoeur has stepped up and taken a leadership position for a young Phillies team that generally has low expectations placed upon them. Francoeur is not having any of it.
Matt Lombardo of NJ.com writes that Francoeur is not impressed with low expectations for the Phillies:
"If you go around here … You kind of say 'Screw that,' Francoeur told NJ Advance Media when asked about what it takes to gut it out through a 162-game rebuilding season. "We're going to go out there and play hard. Obviously, you might not have the offensive firepower that they've had in years past.
"That doesn't mean you can't do the little things and win. Guys come back really well, have some nice years and the pitching staff throw well. For instance, what happened on Monday with Cole, he's not going to do that again probably the rest of the year. It's just one game. I think there's a good group of guys in here that are confident in each other and picking each other up. Hopefully that starts tonight."
Francoeur put his money where his mouth was and hit a three-run home run last evening that led the Phillies to a 4-2 victory over the Boston Red Sox.
Francoeur almost gave up hitting this past season, appearing in eight games as a relief pitcher for AAA El Paso, a story that landed him back in Sports Illustrated again. But former Phillies manager Charlie Manuel long believed that he could fix Francoeur's stroke to be what people expected it to be when he was a Sports Illustrated cover star. That remains to be seen, but Francoeur is making a statement with this young Phillies team: play hard.
