What to Do With Jeff Francoeur?

Jeff Francoeur is in a funk--a major funk.

We only need to look at the numbers to see a player that has a serious deficiency in terms of his approach at the plate.

Francoeur is swinging at the first pitch a staggering 46% of the time.

The league average is 25%.

Ike Davis swings at the first pitch 21% of the time--David Wright does it 29% of the time.

Francoeur has not worked into many hitters counts either.  He's seen a 3-1 count in only 7% of his at-bats compared to 11% for the rest of the team.

Finally, he is swinging at 56% of ALL pitches he sees.  The rest of the league, including pitchers, swings at 44% of pitches.

He's walked twice since April 18th, with 16 strikeouts over that span.

The worst part of this is that early in the season Francoeur was working the pitcher and seeing more pitches and getting better counts.  This means that his recent performance has been REALLY sub-par, given that he went from league average to way below league average in a very short period of time.

The question is, how to change him from these bad habits?  How to get him to look at a pitch or two, even if it means watching a first pitch fastball right down the middle?

I honestly don't know the answer, and until someone gives him some sort of ultimatum, it's going to be more of the same.

Perhaps a few games on the bench will convince him of the error of his ways.