PORT ST. LUCIE — They would be in the clubhouse last season and John Olerud would speak. He would turn to Matt Franco and say, “I could never do what you do.”
What the 30-year-old Franco, who is mainly used as a pinch-hitter, does is vital. Not only does he accept his role of coming off the bench, he excels at it. When you look at championship teams and teams who end the season saying, “What if …,” it is very often the Matt Francos of the majors who make the difference.
“Hearing stuff like that from a guy with his ability really makes you feel real good,” Franco said of Olerud’s comments.
Major league pinch-hitting is such a difficult job to fill because most players don’t have experience with it. They are always the best players on their teams up to the time they make the bigs. Plus …
“It’s tough because you’re always facing tough pitching,” manager Bobby Valentine said.
Valentine’s point is you don’t use a pinch-hitter when a pitcher stinks.
Franco — who had 14 pinch-hits (fourth in the majors) last year — batted .272 after the seventh inning last season. He also set a major league record with 20 pinch-hit walks.
He owns a routine he’s worked on since he first started pinch-hitting regularly when he came to Shea for the majority of the 1997 season.
He watches the first four or five innings from the bench before heading into the clubhouse to go on a stationary bike or a treadmill. He works up a sweat as he continues to view the game on TV. While doing this, he thinks about whom he might face.
One of the tougher aspects of baseball is that a good hitter is only successful three times out of 10. For a pinch-hitter those 10 at-bats can be over a two-week period or more. So, if you’re doing well, 70 percent of the time you feel like you are failing for periods that last two week or more.
“You can go two or three weeks without a hit very easily,” said Franco, who is 7-for-32 (.219) this spring. “That does wear on your mind. That’s the job so you have to know that going in.
“I’ve made a big jump the last couple of years, learning how to deal with failure. There comes a point when you have to realize you are not going to get a hit every time and when you go [hitless for] one, two, three, four, five or even 10 at-bats, you can’t take it into your next at-bat.”
Of course, like all guys, Franco thinks he could play every day. He knows with Robin Ventura at third and Todd Zeile at first, this is never going to happen with the Mets.
“If you’re going to be a role/bench player, then there is no better place to do it than New York,” said Franco, who hit .235 in 132 at-bats last season. “You know you are going to have a chance to do something big and that makes it exciting. If I was sitting on the bench in Pittsburgh or something, I would probably have a different feeling about being a bench player.”
GM Steve Phillips realizes Franco’s value and doesn’t see it changing.
“On this team he is going to stay as a role player,” Phillips said.
However, as a .260 career hitter, Franco wonders how he could do in an everyday role. This season, he hopes to get 25 starts total at first and third base.
