Phillies: The curious career of third baseman Maikel Franco

Maikel Franco has had an up and down career but has been an underrated member of the Phillies the past two years. Just how good is he?

Maikel Franco was somewhat of a forgotten piece coming into the season. He spent most of the offseason wondering if he would have a spot on the roster this year due to the free agency rumors surrounding the Phillies and Manny Machado. As we all well know, the Phillies ended up missing out on Machado and signing Bryce Harper instead, but Franco still had to fight for his job.

At the start of spring training, Gabe Kapler declared a competition for the third base job between Franco and Scott Kingery. Franco had a tough spring but managed to win the job.

Franco has since started the season with a bang, batting .263 with seven home runs and 22 RBI, stating his case for the highly coveted title of best eight-hole hitter in baseball.

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Franco has had somewhat of a mercurial career to this point. He made his debut Sept. 2, 2014, but didn’t see extended action until 2015. That was arguably his most productive year with playing time taken into account. He hit .280 with 14 homers and 50 RBI in 80 games played in 2015 (a pace of about 30 homers and 100 RBI over a full season), and expectations were high for him heading into 2016.

Over the next two years, Franco had a trajectory like a rocket; a rocket that’s run out of gas. He had a decent year in 2016, although it fell well short of the pace he set the year prior. He batted .255 with 25 homers and 88 RBI, but his strikeouts became a real issue, as he whiffed 106 times against only 40 walks.

In 2017 though, the floor really dropped from under Franco. He cut his strikeouts down a bit (95) and his home run total stayed steady (24), but his average plummeted to .230 and his RBI dropped to 76. He also started swinging over the top of absolutely everything, grounding into a whopping 21 double plays.

Most fans were down on Franco heading into 2018, but he had a quietly good year. He got off to a similar start to the one he’s had this year, batting .266 with four dingers and 26 driven in through April (granted he was batting higher in the order).

Franco then took small steps back in May and June before taking off like a rocket (with fuel) right around the time the Manny Machado trade rumors reached a frenzy in July. He slashed a remarkable .330/.378/.593 that month, with seven long balls and 15 RBI.

Franco missed some time in September, and his numbers tailed off towards the end of the year. Despite that, he still finished with 22 home runs and 68 RBI in 111 starts. He also led the team in batting average (among hitters with 200 or more at-bats) at .270 (not exactly a ringing endorsement of last year’s Phils offense) and was second behind Rhys Hoskins in both slugging (.467) and OPS (.780).

So what has led to Franco’s turnaround? Pitch selection and controlling his swing. Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen (that’s the 94 WIP radio crew for you snobs who only watch on TV) brought up a fascinating stat about Franco during Sunday’s game.

The two pointed out that Franco has now gone over 500 at-bats without recording back to back strikeouts. He cut his strikeouts all the way down to 62 last year (fewest among those with 200 or more at-bats) and cut his double play balls down to 15. His swing and miss rate has been dropping steadily since it peaked at 11.8% in 2016 and sits at 9.1% this year.

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Franco has been even more disciplined this year, drawing more walks (14) than strikeouts (nine). Granted, eight of those walks are intentional (which leads the majors) but even that can be taken as a sign of respect. Why pitch to the best eight-hole hitter in the game when you can go after the pitcher instead?

So who is Franco really, and what is his ultimate value to this Phillies team? Well, defensively he’s not that great. He has a cannon of an arm, but has fairly low mobility, and is prone to errors (55 for his career).

Offensively, Franco is an aggressive (and borderline wild) hitter, who’s grown more disciplined with age.

Franco’ll look silly at the plate sometimes, but he’ll always have good power numbers, and if people get on base in front of him, he’ll continue to drive them in.  Franco’s defensive numbers put a dent in his career WAR of 2.2 but if the prevailing winds hold, he’ll make a solid designated hitter for the Phillies in a few years.

Right now though, Franco’s an underrated and productive piece on a contending team. He’s no Mike Schmidt, but he’ll bat in lots of runs, make the occasional highlight-reel play on defense, and will hopefully serve as a key cog on a World Series team.