Archive for Maikel Franco

My first reaction to Maikel Franco agreeing to sign a one-year, $2.95 million deal with the Royals was one of slight disappointment. After four years of being roughly league-average or worse, I did not have high expectations for Franco going into 2020, but in leaving one of the majors’ best home run parks for right-handed hitters for one of the worst, my expectations got even lower.

Then in looking over Franco’s stats as a Phillie, something occurred to me. He has an incredibly similar profile to another third baseman who has been a much better home run hitter than Franco has been in recent years. While Franco has averaged 22.5 at-bats for every home run going back to 2016, this other third baseman has needed only 16.3 at-bats per homer over the same period. Here is how these two third basemen have stacked up for each of the last four seasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

The past week in lineups has featured some interesting developments, including a couple of bottom-of-the-order hitters being highly productive and the outfield mixes for the Padres and Giants shifting a bit. I’m breaking the lineups down, team-by-team, starting…now.

Arizona

With Jake Lamb (quad) out for at least five more weeks, first base appears to belong to Christian Walker, as he had started every game since Lamb went on the IL up until Thursday night’s game against the Padres. Jarrod Dyson has started six of the seven games with a right-handed starter, all in center field. That hasn’t resulted in a reduced role for Ketel Marte, as he has started every game so far, playing second base when Dyson is in center field. It’s Wilmer Flores who has gotten squeezed out of playing time, starting only seven of the team’s 13 games.
Read the rest of this entry »

Wilmer Difo seems to be taking the Daniel Murphy trade in stride.

He received starts at second base in the first two games of the post-Murphy era in D.C., and he went 3 for 8 with each hit being for extra bases. (He also started for a third straight day on Thursday, though as of this writing, he is taking an 0-fer.) Difo has speed and can spray line drives, but power has not shown up as a key part of his skill set over his time in the majors. The flyball revolution is not for everyone, and Davey Martinez made sure to remind his 26-year-old infielder of that.
Read the rest of this entry »

In a general and simplified sense, some players take longer to develop (and subsequently break out) than others. But there’s obviously no shortage of examples throughout the sporting world where that breakout never occurred. Is that something that the Philadelphia Phillies should be concerned about in relation to one of their (still) young position players? In a number of different respects, Maikel Franco was the worst third baseman in baseball among qualifiers in 2017. The Phillies third sacker finished with the worst Off rating among the group that features 22 qualifiers, with a -22.4 mark. The second worst figure on the list of qualifiers came from Yolmer Sanchez, at -5.1, and at least he had the defensive game to at least help things balance out a little bit. Within that group, there was only one third baseman that finished with a negative WAR for the season; it was Franco’s -0.5.

There was a lot of hope that Franco would break through in 2017 for a Phillies team that folks see as the next up-and-coming product of a total rebuild. While they didn’t take too large a step forward, some of their young players did, and more are on the way. Which certainly murks up the picture for Franco somewhat moving forward. With the production and some of the trends that we’ve seen from the last two years in regard to Franco, though, it’s probably time for current and prospective owners to call it quits on the Phillies’ third baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

Across the network recently, we’ve featured writers sharing their bold predictions for the impending 2017 season. Since I’m more of a follower than a leader with little sense of individuality, this is a path that I will also be traversing. However, I’ll be limiting my bold and sweeping declarations to the spot where I make my living on this site: the hot corner. Let’s look at a few potentially terribly, and very likely, misguided opinions that I have about the third base position heading into the new season.

Read the rest of this entry »

In what was expected to serve as a breakout season, Maikel Franco’s 2016 campaign was riddled with disappointing aspects. His 1.4 WAR finished 21st among 24 qualifying players at the third base position, the same ranking in which his -7.4 Off rating fell when it was all said and done. There’s still plenty of upside there, though, and certain elements of his game indicate that it isn’t quite time to give up on Franco becoming an impact player at the hot corner before long.

Franco’s 2015 season indicated big things potentially on the horizon for him last season. He finished with a slash that featured a .280 average, a .343 on-base percentage, and an .840 OPS across 335 plate appearances. His ISO came in at .217, while he finished with park-adjusted offense that came in at 129, painting him as a well above-average offensive player.

Obviously we’re comparing 335 plate appearances to 630 in 2016, but his average fell to .255, his OBP came in at .306, and his OPS lost over 100 points, down to .733. The ISO that was a source of encouragement in 2015 came in at only .172, a significantly lower figure than that of the previous season. It all culminated in a wRC+ of 92, a far cry from where he was in that first real taste of the big leagues. So what just happened to Franco that he experienced such a regression from 2015 to 2016?

Read the rest of this entry »

My goal over the next few weeks will be to reexamine some of the seasons of third basemen throughout Major League Baseball. We’ll start with the bottom tiers, in the form of a couple of groups, working our way up to individual performances that are actually worth discussing.

Since WAR isn’t necessarily a fantasy element, we’ll use something at least a little bit more relevant to our purpose here and organize our 3Bs by their Off rating. And since the objective is to observe the results and performances of the position overall, we have to start somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ just happens to be at the bottom of our 24 qualifying third sackers.

The good news is that no third baseman finished on the negative side of the WAR game. However, there were some that provided negative offensive value to their club, based off of that Off rating alone. The following represent that group, with the exception of Yunel Escobar, who represents the only “league average” player among these seven, if we’re using Off to determine that.

There certainly isn’t a whole lot within this group that will surprise anyone. The strikeout and walk rates fluctuate a bit, depending on the hitter, but the on-base and power numbers are relatively consistent across the board. The wRC+ column gives you a pretty good idea of where this hitters stand, in terms of being considered “league average”, if Off didn’t already do that for you.

With numbers like this, most of this group isn’t terribly interesting to delve deep into, especially because this was largely expected from the majority of the names on this list. But a pair worth exploring just a little bit deeper, and two that we profiled earlier this season, are Maikel Franco and Travis Shaw.

Franco is interesting because he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was expected to take the next step forward as an offensive player and a potential building block for the Philadelphia Phillies. Instead, he ended up providing negative offensive value overall. There’s some power there, to be sure, as he hit 25 homers and notched the second highest ISO among this group of 3B. In that column earlier in the year, I noted Franco’s increase in swing percentage from his tendencies in 2015, particularly against offspeed and breaking pitches. Turns out, that was a trend that continued throughout the year, as he experienced a near 10 percent increase against offspeed and one of about eight percent against breaking.

This is where things get interesting. Turns out, those trends aren’t necessarily indicative of his overall struggles. Even with that in mind, he still only swung at less than two percent more pitches outside of the strike zone, and experienced a swinging strike rate of 11.8%, only a 0.7% increase. His contact rate was also up about a percentage point. And even those figures can be somewhat deceiving, as his 52.0% overall swing rate was a five percent increase (and the 21st highest rate among all qualifying Major League position players). His penchant for swinging at the first pitch crept up near 40%. That’s absurd. And while he was still able to make decent contact (30.7% Hard%) at a reasonable rate (77.1%), he’s going to have to find an appropriate balance between a legitimate approach and the aggressiveness that he’s become known for. That’ll be the challenge with the new hitting coach in Philly.

Shaw is disappointing just because of the start off to which he got in 2016. He hit .314 in April and a still quality .275 in May. Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall that a slump was on the way and, boy, did it come. His next four months saw averages of .214, .246, .167, and .203, respectively. His OBP over those final four months was just .270, while the power dipped from a solid .213 ISO in the first two months (including a .239 mark in May), to just .160 for the rest of the year. In three of those months, he posted a wRC+ at 50 or below.

Given that his BABIP in April came in at .410, followed by a .347 mark in May, there wasn’t any doubt that a slump was coming. Especially since his hard hit rate dipped in the second half by about seven percent, following from about 35 percent to a mark more around 28, finishing just into the bottom half of the third base group in that regard. While luck certainly played into it in both regards (within the hot start and the frigid finish), there’s reason to believe that Shaw can be a serviceable player in Boston. He’s a versatile player with some pop. If he can solidify the approach, as his strikeout rate did rise above 25% in 2016, there will be a place for him.

The place for the remainder of this group, however, remains to be seen. Escobar, Suarez, and Garcia all maintain relative insignificance because they’re merely stopgaps on bad teams. Headley is past his prime and showed some pop towards in July, but was decidedly average for the remainder of the year. Cuthbert was merely a fill-in for Mike Moustakas and will attempt to become more versatile this winter in order to maintain some semblance of value. In any case, Franco and Shaw remain the only intriguing options for this group moving forward.

Next week, we’ll take a look at the middle-of-the-road types before subsequently moving onto those third basemen worthy of individual attention. And visuals.

Way back in January and February, across the exhibition season in March, and upon the beginning of the 2016 year in April, there were some pretty standard predictions that accompanied the Philadelphia Phillies across that period of time. Everyone knew the Phillies were going to be interesting, but likely among Major League Baseball’s worst teams. And there was also a pretty steady movement behind Maikel Franco as a prime breakout candidate at the hot corner. As the calendar turns to June, though, neither of those predictions have been entirely correct. Not only have the Phillies been quite watchable through these first two months of the year, Franco hasn’t been the surefire breakout player that he was expected to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

These predictions are specifically based on Ottoneu FGpt scoring. Perhaps “Bold” isn’t defined clearly enough, but my hope is that this is structured in such a way that my thought process can provide some benefit (even if the predictions seem a little extreme at face value.)

1. Domingo Santana will be a top 15 OF.

Nelson Cruz, Yasiel Puig, Carlos Gonzalez, Charlie Blackmon, Starling Marte, Adam Jones…  If you looked at our FGpt OF rankings, these are the 15-20^th ranked outfielders. Which is to say, I think Domingo Santana could be better than all of them (and the rest of those listed below him in our rankings) in 2016. The Brewers do not look like a good team (yet…) so – unless he gets injured – expect a full slate of playing time, a great home park, and lots of power (three things that are gold in linear weights scoring.) The obvious hole in his game is the strikeouts (34% in 2015), but if he can reign that in at all, the upside is tremendous.

2. John Jaso will be a viable 2nd OF

The obvious issue has been playing time (70, 99, 70 games played over the past 3 seasons), but given that he slated to play 1B, I feel fairly confident he will play more games than he has in any of the past 3 seasons.  If he does, he could easily produce value which is expected of many #2 OF in FGpts. The Pirates’ outfield is set, so don’t expect him to retain eligibility for 2017, but he should be incredibly useful for this season. Alex Gordon, Starling Marte, Adam Jones, Christian Yelich, Charlie Blackmon, and Yoenis Cespedes are all projected to be within 5 points of wOBA of Jaso. Those players will cost $18-$25 apiece. If he can stay on the field, Jaso has a good chance to be in that tier, and you can get him for about a third of that price.

Read the rest of this entry »