I just went over to Charlie Manuel’s press availability because -- let there be no mistake about this -- Charlie Manuel is awesome. If I could take a road trip with any guy in baseball it would be him. Well, maybe Ozzie Guillen if I wasn’t all hung up on coming back alive, but Cholly would be way up there.
Important for our purposes is that one of the first questions asked of Manuel was what he thought of Jeff Francoeur, in whom the Phillies are apparently interested. The answer: “I’ve always liked Francoeur.” He then made a comparison between Frenchie and Jayson Werth when he first joined the Phillies, referring to how each of them hadn’t yet lived up to their potential. he talked about how Francoeur “hadn’t had success for a couple of years,” and that he was sure he was due to come back. It was unclear where Francoeur was supposed to come back to, because objectively speaking he’s always been gone, but everyone loves Charlie Manuel and no one pressed the issue.
When asked if he thought he could help Francoeur -- the big talking point among Philly fans this week being whether Manuel could “fix” him -- Manuel said that he saw “mechanical flaws” in Francoeur’s game. I just checked my Cholly-to-English dictionary and it seems that “mechanical flaws” translates roughly to “a complete and utter inability to play the game and an utter hostility to instruction or suggestion designed to make oneself better.” But like I said: roughly.
Manuel then went on to talk about how Jimmy Rollins needs to be Jimmy Rollins or some such thing, but really, my work was done by then.
Sign him, Ruben. You know you want to.