Jeff Francouer plays baseball. In 2012, he played poorly, ending the season with a total fWAR of -1.2. With another $7 million guaranteed to him in 2013, the Royals should be worried about whether they will get any kind of return from him in 2013.

Being the considerate fan that I am, I decided to run some numbers and see if the data might shed some light on the woe that is Frenchy. Over the past 20 years, there have been 21 players between the ages of 25-30 (Frenchy is 28) who put up less than -1 WAR in a season in which they met the minimum PAs to qualify for the batting title. The list looks like this:

Not a terrible list of players, but certainly a list of terrible years. That team would lose 160 games. But more than a few of them had nice rebound years in the year after:

So, the good news is that only 4 of the previous 19 players put up another negative WAR season, while 8 of the 19 put up a season of 1 WAR or better. Overall, the average WAR for these players was 1.11.

The bad news is that the average WAR for these players in the year before their terrible year was 1.16, so their terrible year may have signaled an ever-so-slight decline. Moreover, it doesn't seem that Frenchy's previous good year in 2011 has any bearing on how well he will do in 2013, since there is no obvious correlation between a good Y-1 WAR and a good Y+1 year.

Overall, I think this data should be slightly comforting for fans resigned to the fact that Frenchy will be the Royals' starting RF next year, as it shows that past terrible seasons have always been improved upon in the next year (or perhaps that the player has been benched before such terribleness can be repeated), with the average output being that of a solid role player.