While trying to defuse a potentially volatile situation from taking shape in the Mets clubhouse, right fielder Jeff Francoeur addressed yesterdays comments on ESPN and called them “false, untruthful and stupid”.
Seth Everett of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, reported that players Jeff Francoeur, Johan Santana, Jose Reyes and John Maine were very unhappy with Jerry Manuel.
A charge that Francoeur scoffed at and took great offense to this afternoon.
“That’s far from the truth,” Francoeur said. “Jerry’s helped me more than I could ever imagine. He’s given me a second chance to get back to where I want to be. To think that I’m not behind him is stupid.”
“To say that four guys are unhappy, that’s crap,” Francoeur said. “We’re behind Jerry. It’s 10 games into the season. For people to be questioning everything he does is ludicrous.”
Apparently, Francoeur took charge of the situation and sought out each of his teammate this morning to make sure that everyone was on the same page, and all of them backed Jerry Manuel as manager of the Mets.
“When a guy attacks your manager, you get pissed off,” he said. “To say we’re unhappy, that’s just stupid. That’s the whole feeling here. You can ask everybody in here.”
If this keeps up, it won’t be long until the calls for team captain start including Jeff Francoeur who I immediately envisioned as a leader after he came to the Mets, but I have to admit that he has exceeded even my expectations as far as that goes.
When I said Francoeur would take charge of a listless clubhouse and bring some swagger, I never expected to happen as fast as it ultimately did.
My spring claim that Jeff Francoeur should be considered one of the Mets core players may have drawn chuckles from my critics in February, but now it doesn’t seem so far fetched does it?
