just 13 days after the Braves signed him, the Braves designated Franco for assignment after the team acquired Mark Teixeira from the Texas Rangers. He accepted a minor league assignment on August 8 and was called back up as promised on September 1. He declared free agency on October 29, 2007. Franco began the 2008 season — his 31st in professional baseball — as a first baseman for the Tigres de Quintana Roo (Cancún) in the Mexican League. After the Mexican League On May 2, 2008, Franco officially announced his retirement from baseball to his Mexican League team, the Quintana Roo Tigers. An official announcement was released the next day. Franco said that retiring was the hardest decision he had ever made, but he pointed to his decreasing production as a player and said that he felt like it was time to retire. Franco was hired in March 2009 as the manager of the rookie-level Gulf Coast League Mets. In Franco's only season managing the team, they posted a record of 22 wins and 34 losses. In 2010–2011, Franco managed a winter league team, the Caribes de Anzoátegui, in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. He led the team to its first league championship in 20 years. He returned to the team the following season, but he was fired after the team started with a 28–28 win–loss record. Soon thereafter, Franco was hired as the manager of the Pericos de Puebla for the 2012 Mexican League season. In two seasons with Puebla, he led the team to 110 wins and 104 losses. Franco appeared on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in 2013. Paul White of USA Today wrote that while Franco was a consistent player over a long career, he was rarely dominant. White wrote that Franco's statistics were inferior to other Baseball Hall of Fame second basemen. Franco received six Hall of Fame votes (1.1% of the total ballots), an insufficient total to appear on the next year's ballot. Return to baseball On May 16, 2014, the Fort Worth Cats of United League Baseball announced that Franco had been signed for the 2014 season. He went 6-for-27 in seven games. On February 8, 2015, Ishikawa Million Stars of the professional Japanese Independent baseball league Baseball Challenge League announced that Franco had been signed as a player-manager for the 2015 season. Franco said that he did not think he would