Well it looks like manager Terry Collins had his little pow-wow with quasi-closer Frank Francisco on Sunday and two of them passed around a peace pipe resulting in Collins affirming his trust and confidence in Francisco as his closer.

“Everybody wants to hear something positive,” Collins said. “I just went to him this morning and said, ‘You’ve got to hang in there.’ He’s disappointed. He’s mad at me because I took him out, which is a common thing. It happens. I certainly don’t blame him. If I was in his shoes, I’d be mad at me, too.”

So Frankie-Frank is back on the saddle after three straight shaky outings, but believe me his leash is short and at the first hint of trouble, you saw how quickly Collins ran out and gave him the ol’ heave-ho.

Francisco was the the prize of the offseason for the New York Mets and Alderson saw fit to fill his coffers with a two year, $12 million dollar deal to be the closer – a role which he has had trouble retaining throughout his career. Before donning his Mets uniform, Francisco had amassed 18 blown saves in his 70 save opportunities. That’s an unsightly 74.2% save percentage.

In Grapefruit League play this Spring, Francisco finished with a 5.54 ERA and a 1.69 WHIP in 11 appearances for the Amazins. So his recent struggles are just a continuation of what we saw last month.

2.1 IP – 6 H – 6 ER – 3 BB – 1 K

His last three outings point to trouble, and while some may say it’s only April, I’l direct you to his career 4.22 ERA in save situations which doesn’t even account for all the inherited runners he has allowed to cross the plate.

Hey look, he’s all ours now, so all we can do is hope that at 32, he can dig down inside and somehow become the closer he is being paid to be. The last thing this team needs right now is a $6 million dollar a year middle reliever.

Luckily, Jon Rauch has exceeded expectations thus far and could step in as closer if the need arises – as it did on Saturday.

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By the way, it’s only April 23, and there’s still a week left until the end of the month. But yesterday we surpassed our record-breaking traffic for the month of March when we had the best month in our site’s history. It looks like we have about 750-1,000 new readers a day frequenting our site in April and I want to welcome you all aboard! 🙂