{"id":133585,"date":"2025-06-27T00:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T00:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/133585\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T00:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T00:20:10","slug":"what-do-rays-fans-think-of-the-wander-franco-verdict-we-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/133585\/","title":{"rendered":"What do Rays fans think of the Wander Franco verdict? We asked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Rays star shortstop Wander Franco was convicted<\/a> of sexual abuse of a minor Thursday in the Dominican Republic and received a two-year suspended prison sentence. <\/p>\n

He will not have to serve his full sentence as long as he follows certain conditions. <\/p>\n

Franco, 24, has been off the Rays\u2019 active roster since the start of a 2023 investigation<\/a> into social media posts alleging he was involved in an inappropriate relationship with a minor. <\/p>\n

Fans across Tampa Bay reacted with a mix of disappointment and shock after news of the verdict was announced late Thursday. <\/p>\n

Jim Hosier of St. Petersburg has been a Rays fan since he moved to Florida in 2018 and attended six or seven games a year when the team still played at Tropicana Field. <\/p>\n

He said he\u2019d been a fan of Franco\u2019s from when he started watching games. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was great to watch, especially doing so well so young,\u201d Hosier said. \u201cAnd he signed that (11-year, $182 million) deal, so we knew we\u2019d have him for a while.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was \u201cdiscouraging,\u201d Hosier said, to hear that the team\u2019s once-star player had been accused of sexual abuse. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt least this is going to bring the Rays some closure now,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to see Franco go to jail for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Greeves, 46, of St. Petersburg has been to hundreds of Rays games since the team\u2019s start in 1998. He said he and his son, Brandon, were big fans of Franco before he was taken off the roster. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery game, we\u2019d be in the first row waving like crazy trying to get his attention,\u201d Greeves said. \u201cBrandon wanted Franco to sign his ball more than anything in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

The mother of the child Franco was convicted of abusing also was on trial for money laundering and sexual exploitation. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison. <\/p>\n

Greeves said Franco\u2019s sentence was \u201can absolute disgrace,\u201d especially compared to the sentence the child\u2019s mother faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cJustice was absolutely not served (Thursday),\u201d Greeves said. \u201cThe guy who does the crime gets probation, but the girl\u2019s mom gets 10 years in prison? Where\u2019s the justice in that?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cYou do the crime you pay the fine and spend the time,\u201d a Facebook user under the name Carol Gonzalez wrote under a Tampa Bay Rays fan account\u2019s post on Tuesday. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a shame because I really liked him and hoped he would be proven innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWander Franco should have a longer sentence than two years. If you have to add a condition that he not be around minors, he should probably be off the streets,\u201d wrote X user Randy Wilkins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Franco also faces pending charges<\/a> of illegal possession of a firearm after a November altercation<\/a> he had with a man in the Dominican Republic. A trial date for those charges has not yet been set.<\/p>\n

Even if Franco tried to return to MLB after serving his sentence, his conviction likely would keep him from being granted a visa to work in the United States. <\/p>\n

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Tampa Bay Times reporter Lizzy Alspach contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Rays star shortstop Wander Franco was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor Thursday in the Dominican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,4,297,19476,19475,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-133585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-rays","11":"tag-section-rays","12":"tag-section-sports","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","15":"tag-tampabay","16":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114752469627262446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}