If you were going to script a baseball movie about a player
who on paper should be a perfect fit for the NY Mets, then the mustachioed John
Franco would seem to tick all of the boxes.
He was a tough-talking guy from Brooklyn, spoke with the kind of accent
that made him sound just like one of the guys from the neighborhood, he was
good at what he did and essentially overachieved as a diminutive framed pitcher
called upon to enter the game when it was on the line, then expected to shut
down the opposition.
Why then did so many Mets fans exhibit flagrant hostility
towards Franco? They derisively referred
to him as the “Tomato Farmer” (an accurate description of one of his hobbies
out there in the bullpen). He joined the
team not as some over-the-hill pitcher whose best days were behind him, but at
the ripe old age of 29 and pitched for the Mets until age 43, before closing
out his career in a last gasp with the Astros at 44.
The little lefty threw what he called a circle change. Others termed it a screwball. The fact is that the motion of the pitch
varies as does the speed based upon how you drag your foot during
delivery. Franco’s circle change was
designed to induce ground balls. With
the ball dropping down (usually out of the strike zone), players hit on top of
it, hence pounding it into the ground, or they swung over it and missed
entirely. Franco was not a huge
strikeout pitcher, relying mostly on motion and deception to get batters to
make weak contact.
Perhaps it was for this very reason that fans just didn’t
seem to take to Franco they way they did to other relievers in the past. Most fans think of the shutdown reliever as
someone who generates a ton of strikeouts and throws at very high velocity. Although Franco threw in the 90s, his out
pitch was an off-speed number and not the heat fans were craving. When Armando Benitez arrived and pushed
Franco into a setup role, fans were excited because Benitez threw gas.
I know whenever Franco entered a game a lot of people
reached for the Rolaids, Tums or alcohol of their choice because he would walk
a lot of folks who stubbornly refused to swing at his illusion of a
strike. Still, he managed to keep the
runners from scoring and did yeoman’s work for 14 years for the NY Mets.
Some Mets fans became more accepting of Franco in the period
immediately after the 9/11 attacks in which he led the fight to flout the rules
of Major League Baseball by donning and having teammates also wear caps
honoring the Fire Departments and Police Departments of New York City who were
so brave and sacrificed so much during and immediately after the attacks.
Just as Jack Morris and Don Sutton made it to the Hall of
Fame by being “compilers” – very good if not great pitchers who hung around
long enough to accumulate a very impressive body of work, John Franco is in
very rare company indeed but he’s the Rodney Dangerfield of relievers. If you asked the average fan, “What left
handed reliever has more saves than anyone else in the history of the game?”
very few would guess the correct answer to be John Franco. And on the subject of saves in general, he
had 424 of them to place 5th on the all-time list behind folks like Mariano
Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and the similarly underappreciated Lee Smith. His career ERA of 2.89 is just a tick below
Hoffman’s 2.87 and better than Smith’s 3.03.
The Mets in 2012 finally gave the man his proper due and
enshrined him in the NY Mets Hall of Fame.
It’s not like it was a stretch or anything, given his longevity, his
multiple All-Star appearances and his two Fireman of the Year awards to go
along with a HOF-worthy resume. In 2019
they hired both he and his former teammate Al Leiter into operations advisory
roles to work with pitchers in the organization. Franco has openly campaigned to get a shot at
a manager’s interview for the current vacancy, but to date no one in the front
office is listening.
3 comments:
Reese -
Sometimes I wonder if Mets fans love ANY relief pitchers.
After this four-part series come articles about pitchers they did like. Unfortunately I won't see the feedback as I board my flight this afternoon and likely won't have much Internet access until I return on the evening of the 12th.
If Johnny Franco was in his prime, he'd be a huge plus to this Mets pen. He accomplished a lot.
My brother got into an argument with Franco once in the men's room there. Maybe he'll share the details someday.
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