Can Nick Franklin Remain Top-10 at Second and Short?
A lot of ink has been spilled on Seattle Mariners’ infielder Kyle Seager this season. The multi-position slugger is looking to repeat on his 20-home run rookie season and is eligible at second and third, depending on your provider’s position rules. Not only does Seager have pop, he also tried to steal my girlfriend in a dream I had the other night (your heroic scribe was victorious…or just woke up in time).
But it’s Seager’s infield-mate who we’ll shed some light on in the shortstop space today even though he’s not really a shortstop. See, it’s because of The Great Gazoo that Seager is no longer taking aim at multi-position eligibility. For the Mariners, Nick Franklin’s got the keystone on lock for the foreseeable future.
Franklin, a switch hitter with an enormous helmet, saw his first major league action on May 27 after the Mariners pulled the plug on Dustin Ackley for what felt like the hundredth time. In the 57 games since, Franklin has been a house afire, hitting 10 home runs and chipping in five steals for his owners while piling up the RBI.
The power has given some pause, though, perhaps because Franklin is just 170lbs (he’s a little shorter and as lanky as Alexei Ramirez, for example). But the power isn’t exactly new for Franklin – he hit 50 home runs in the minors in just 438 games, or roughly one every 40 plate appearances. That rate has been a bit more extreme this season (one every 24 plate appearances) and might slow down, but the power in Franklin’s bat is a skill that’s been on display since 2010. He also hits a fair amount of fly balls (40%) and, if you trust stringer data in a 60-game sample, he makes really strong contact (25% line-drive rate).
The bigger concern might be that Franklin is now the owner of a fairly high strikeout rate (25.2%), topping anything he put up in the minors. His walk rate is decent enough (8.7%) to keep the OBP from being a sinkhole right now but his profile would look exceedingly average if a few of those home runs disappeared.
And it’s an odd strikeout and walk profile given Franklin’s approach – he rarely swings. His 42.2% swing rate is in the bottom-100 league-wide and his 59.8% zone swing rate is bottom-50. The issue, then, is that despite not swinging at much in the zone, Franklin still has a 28.5% outside swing rate and has an uninspiring 78.2% contact rate. Basically, Franklin is being very selective but not in the “sit on your pitch in the zone” kind of way – he appears to just not swing very often.
Granted, that’s not a huge concern on it’s own as there are plenty of examples of players succeeding that way. But one of Franklin’s key attributes as a fantasy tool was likely to be his OBP for that type of league and his .314-mark at present is below-average. His BABIP (.300) should be higher given his history and batted ball profile, sure, but Franklin needs those walks to come to fully live up to his top prospect status. That’s more of a “real baseball” comment than a fantasy one, especially since many still play in batting average leagues (where owners would just prefer the strikeout rate comes down to allow for more balls in play).
For the rest of the season, Franklin may still be making adjustments and figuring out the appropriate level of aggression against major league arms. Even with a below-average AVG or OBP, he’s a great own at either middle infield spot. When you figure in that his BABIP and walk rate could both be in for an increase as he figures out his approach, it’s not hard to see Franklin remaining a top-10 option at either spot.
The far bigger issue for dynasty league owners is that Franklin is yet to appear at shortstop in the majors, meaning his current flexibility could be lost. He’ll still be a fine own at second, but the option to move him around has certainly added value to his profile this year and would have made building your team with him as a piece that much easier.
Blake Murphy is a freelance sportswriter based out of Toronto. Formerly of the Score, he's the managing editor at Raptors Republic and frequently pops up at Sportsnet, Vice, and around here. Follow him on Twitter @BlakeMurphyODC.
10-team H2H keeper My team is weak in pitching, Strong in Hitting. Can you rate/comment on these two trades:
1) My Braun/Wright/Cobb for His Sale/Kuroda/Lohse/Rivera
2) My Braun/Wright/Rizzo/Cobb for His Kershaw/HanRam/Latos (he might not go for)
3) My Braun/Wright/Cobb for His Kershaw/Latos
Do it
Need a bit more detail on the league type (salary, min # players, etc). However, if you’re gunning for a title and those deals don’t leave you too thin on hitting (Braun and Wright are both out, anyway), then sure. I’d probably take #3 if you can handle not getting back SVs, although #3 and #1 are close.
Don’t do any of those trades. Braun is still a first round talent, but if you’re team is that weak in pitching, see if this trading partner would do Braun for Kershaw straight up. You always have to take the hitter over the pitcher, but there are so many question marks that you would be getting back in all three trade options, except for Kershaw.
How can you say don’t do any? Flags fly forever…if he’s got a good shot at a title this year it doesn’t make sense to hold Braun. All about the W, even if it means taking a hit next year.
Flags fly forever but in H2H the goal is to have a quality team and make the playoffs, at that point it is a crap shoot. Increasing your championship odds from a 25% chance to a 30% is not worth it in any given year if it could mean you don’t make the playoffs the next season.
Not that any of these moves are THAT horrible, but especially in H2H selling the farm to compete this year is silly.
Hardly selling the farm if Kershaw and Latos are in the return. I understand the hitting-over-pitching thing but I’d say if you’re odds are as good as 25% already then yeah, it makes sense to improve your odds at the expense of future potential…you can always recover from that after with other smart moves. I’m all about the present with fantasy.
I own Franklin in Ottoneu and have watched a lot of his AB’s this year. He looks like the bat could be knocked out of his hands but somehow he muscles up to hit the ball pretty hard. Surprisingly hard, sometimes. It’s clear he’s still adjusting, as he had a very strong June with an average ISO (.153) but a terrible July with a serious ISO of .234. I think he’ll end up settling in between those splits for next season and beyond. One interesting thing is that he has a rough home/road split, but the opposite way you’d expect – he’s hitting much better at Safeco than elsewhere (just a .225 BABIP on the road). He’s in a terrible slump right now and still hasn’t shown that he can hit lefties, but there’s a lot to like here and he’s just 22.
Yeah, I noticed the home/road thing but really, we’re splitting a small sample even smaller there and it might be nothing but noise, especially with the BABIP impact.
I’d expect Franklin’s slash line to look about the same at year’s end as it does now, with his K rate remaining in the 23-25% range. But that rate won’t stay there next year, it will drop.
Franklin has typically started at one level, and then moved up mid-season, every year. Each time, when he went up, his K rate jumped at the new level in the remainder of the promotion system—although his ISO often jumped too. Then the following year when Franklin continued at the same level, his K rates dropped, and his batting average jumped, usually with improvement in his other peripherals. We are just seeing the same pattern again.
Part of this is facing higher level competition for the first time. Part of it is ‘second time around syndrome,’ where the new league adjusts and attacks his weaknesses; Frankin’s numbers were bound to drop in the second half of this year. A major part, though, seems to me the man’s approach, and I mean that in a positive sense. Franklin has immense confidence, a real power swing, and each time at a higher level he _attacks_. He’s not a free swinger, but he’s going to take a real cut when he swings. He tries 115% to make things happen, and that can work against him; he can get too aggressive, in a word. Hence the Ks, swinging at borderline strikes; hence the HRs also. Hence some of his errors where he’s trying to make something happen barehanding the ball or rushing a throw. He put a lot of pressure on himself going into Boston with the Marniers playing the number one team in the league, and got a little hack happy, which makes his numbers the last two weeks or so look worse than he’s likely playing. That’s just his make-up; he doesn’t wait he goes all out.
Each time, coming back the following year, Franklin starts himself out a bit more under control. What really impressed me about his season was the excellent BB rate in AAA to start the year. That was the first time he’s been over 10%, and he retained his low swing-rate and general strike zone judgement in the the big leagues so far. The power is real, despite his size. He has excellent bat speed; he has a real true swing from the left side; he backspins the ball for carry with the best of them. And the LD % is no illusion either. Next year, Franklin will be further along learning the pitchers in the majors and how they work him. He probaly won’t hit .320, except maybe once at his career peak or something. I’d expect him to settle in with a +10% BB rate and an ISO of .200 +/- .020 once things stabilize.
Franklin’s a terrific hitter. Remember, Joe Morgan and Jimmy Wynn were about Franklin’s size: some guys do ‘this thing.’ He won’t likely produce higher than his present line during the rest of this year, though, from a Roto perspective. The good sign for the moment is that he’s drawing walks again the last few games: the team has got him round to playing more under control in my view. The contact will follow.
And you can forget about him playing SS, it’s just not going to happen. The team needs him to get his reps and set-ups in the groove at 2B for going forward, he’s already behind on development time there because the org delayed too long on moving him over. He’s a 2Bman permanently, full stop. Brad Miller is in fact the guy who’s being moved around the diamond, he’s played at 2B and 3B both.
He was benched the last few games after a very bad stretch without making much / any contact. Already a small sample but any noticeable plate discipline erosion the last few weeks versus the previous few months?
Could have just been a clear his head kinda thing, as some managers see value in that while a guy works out kinks in the cage. He’s 0-for-21 with two walks in last four games but before that he was red hot. It’s an incredibly small sample, but his SwStr% was way up in those games but not his swing rate noticeably.
Hopefully, we don’t want him getting all Ackley’d! 🙁
Actually there has been different reports of his weight. On the Mariners mlb page, he’s listed at 195, and actually I saw him interviewed on mlb network a couple of weeks ago, and they asked him “are you really 195?” He said “I get that a lot, but yeah I am really 195.”