I've heard and read a lot of comments from Mets fans who are pleased to see Francoeur hitting .324 since joining the club... as if a .324 BA and identical OBP in some way legitimize Minaya's acquisition of such a terribly confused hitter.  Being a Mets fan in Atlanta I can tell you that from what I have seen, nothing has changed in terms of plate discipline or his overall approach in the batter's box. I decided to track all of his at bats since he joined the team (and will continue to do so, as I search for reasons to keep watching that don't include Hernandezisms), and then cross referenced some of that with the data provided by FanGraphs to break down his first 9 games:

In 37 Plate Appearances as a Met, Francoeur has:

• Swung at the first pitch 23 times (62%)
• Is averaging 3.5 pitches per at bat (actually an improvement from his 3.34 season average)
• Has drawn zero walks (I suppose that could be assumed)
• OSwing percentage is 36.2% (only pitchers and Angel Berroa are worse)
• ZSwing percentage is 88.3% (Leads the team, closest to him is Reed at 73%, and is 7 points higher than his season average and league leading 81%)
• Swing percentage is 62.7% (Up from his season average of 58%, which is third in the league)

Despite all that, Manuel somehow believes:

"He's the type of guy, where it looks like if he does get right, he can carry a club."

All of this must be kept in mind as fans look at the box scores and see 1 for 3's and 2 for 4's and think "well maybe this won't be so bad after all."  Unless Francoeur can figure out how to improve his plate discipline and discover exactly what pitches in what locations are the pitches he can do the most damage with, we will be left with a lot of painful Sir Swing-A-Lot moments as we suffer through the remainder of this season.  Obviously I want the best for this team, but at this point I'm hoping his average drops down to where it should be, so we can avoid Omar getting fooled by some decent stats and actually bringing this head case back for 2010.