Mostly Harmless

The last few years there has been an almost unanimous consensus that Jeff Francoeur would be a Royal someday. Well someday is today. I guess because the Francoeur to KC rumors have been around so long I just can't seem to get worked up over his signing. I mean I thought I was going to hate it and I expected to hate it but now that it's happened I actually don't mind it, partly because he's not blocking anybody and mostly because he doesn't turn 27 until next month. I didn't realize he was that young since we've been hearing about his poor plate discipline for what seems like a decade. So while his last three years have paled in comparison to his first three he does still has age on his side (unlike Guillen and Ankiel).

Years	PA	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB%	SO%	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2005-07	1656	84	7	62	253	4.5	19.2	.280	.319	.463	.782	100
2008-10	1787	83	9	39	212	5.1	15.9	.256	.301	.389	.690	83

Defensively he has 81 assists in his six seasons which is pretty good (in fact, I read that it leads all of baseball in that time period). He's not going to be Bloomquist out there and given KC's pitchers flyball tendencies this is a good thing. An outfield of Gordon/Francoeur in the corners and one of Maier/Dyson/Blanco in CF would be quite athletic.

I'm not going to defend the signing to those who bash it because I understand their point. But I always assumed Moore would either trade a highly rated prospect for him or sign him for an obscene amount of money, neither of those happened. So this appears to be a mostly harmless acquisition in my opinion. If it works, great! If it doesn't then he goes the way of Jacobs and Ankiel (meaning elsewhere).

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