{"id":161,"date":"2005-07-02T23:19:12","date_gmt":"2005-07-03T03:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=161"},"modified":"2005-07-02T23:19:12","modified_gmt":"2005-07-03T03:19:12","slug":"old-ball-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"old ball players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last few days have been tough on my fantasy baseball season. As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I chose my players predominantly based on whether they&#8217;d ever played for the Mets.<\/p>\n<p>What this meant was that while I sometimes picked players who&#8217;d been let go for bad reasons (Fonzie), more often than not, my players are older and past-peak.<\/p>\n<p>But the thing about old ball players is that you love them just the same.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Stanton has played his last game for the Yankees. He knew it after he gave up a game-winning home run earlier this week and went gently into the night.<\/p>\n<p>John Franco, on the other hand, never wanted to leave the Mets, but he did want to keep playing (even if on a more limited basis). But the Mets weren&#8217;t interested in keeping a work horse around, even though he&#8217;d grown up a Mets fan, had played most of his career with the team, and was team captain.<\/p>\n<p>So he went to the Astros, where they used him as a lefty specialist and allowed his season ERA to reach an appalling 7.20. Anyone who ever watched Franco play knows that he always needed a batter or two to get into the groove, and when you&#8217;re only being brought into the game for one or two batters, you just don&#8217;t have that luxury.<\/p>\n<p>But what this season&#8217;s numbers don&#8217;t show is how marvelous a pitcher he really has been:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1,119 games<\/li>\n<li>424 saves<\/li>\n<li>1,245.2 innings pitched<\/li>\n<li>81 home runs given up<\/li>\n<li>975 strikeouts<\/li>\n<li>2.89 ERA<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Comparatively, Roger Clemens has pitched in only 656 games, has given up 341 homeruns, and has an ERA of 3.14.<\/p>\n<p>Drafted in 1981 by the Dodgers, Franco spent his first six pro years with the Reds before coming to the Mets in a trade for Randy Myers, where he remained through the end of last season.<\/p>\n<p>He is second on the all-time saves list, and his career ERA is one of the best in history for a reliever. He holds Mets franchise records for most games pitched and for most games saved.<\/p>\n<p>A four-time all-star, Franco is the second-oldest player in the majors (two years younger than Julio Franco of the Braves and two years older than Roger Clemens).<\/p>\n<p>Franco&#8217;s style was never a flashy one, but it was exciting. When he came into the game, you sat on the edge of your seat waiting to see if he&#8217;d pull it off or if he&#8217;d blow it. He did both, but he did both with great style. He used to drive Mum nuts with that, but I preferred him to our other closers. After all, he simply epitomized the Mets club I loved.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, his numbers since his Tommy John surgery have not been good, even before this season. Because of that, I would be surprised if another team picks Franco up. I suspect this is the end of the line for him (either via a trip to the minors or through walking away).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to see him bring his knowledge and love of the game back to New York as a pitching coach for the Mets.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck, John. We were lucky to have watched you play, and we hope to see you coach in the future. I eagerly await your induction into the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last few days have been tough on my fantasy baseball season. As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I chose my players predominantly based on whether they&#8217;d ever played for the Mets. What this meant was that while I sometimes picked players who&#8217;d been let go for bad reasons (Fonzie), more often than not, my players are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>old ball players - sprite writes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=161\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"old ball players - sprite writes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The last few days have been tough on my fantasy baseball season. 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