We're gonna talk about Maikel Franco. Yea. It's time. And to answer your next question, no he didn't have a good game on Monday night, he went 0-5 on a night that the Phillies scored 11 runs. Now, based on the fact that Franco is hitting .218 on the year and that the Phillies have publicly toyed with the idea of sending him down to the minors, many fantasy owners are panicking. They all (including myself) saw his year last year and thought even brighter days were ahead, but so far, they haven't been. I'm here to preach patience. Take a breath, calm down, stop hyperventilating, and whatever you do, don't drop Maikel Franco, he's going to get better. There's a few reasons I'm optimistic about Franco. First and foremost is the obvious .222 BABIP. Franco has never been a high BABIP guy (power guys often aren't) but a .222 BABIP isn't happening all year, that will improve, and as that improves, the average will improve. If you look at everything else, it all looks fairly good: the walk rate has crept up a tiny bit, the strikeout rate is down (something he vowed to do this year), his hard hit rate is up, his HR/FB rate is right in line with his career, he's on pace for around as many home runs as he hit last year, and he's cut down on infield fly balls. His biggest problem has been breaking pitches, his stats against sliders and changeups have been rough, but he's making an adjustment. After being benched for a short while and lowered in the order, he did some work with Phillies batting coach Matt Stairs, who recommended a mechanical adjustment of re-positioning his hands as they were too close to his face. Stairs also told him to stop trying to do too much, to stop constantly trying to hit a home run, just hit. Franco's also been trying to hard to be an opposite field hitter, Stairs told him just to aim for the gaps. Since he did that work with Stairs, things have been better. Over the past week he's hitting .286 with a home run, and I'm optimistic that he can turn things around. He's talented, too talented to just bomb this hard and waste away into the minors. If someone dropped him, pick him up, and if/when you own him, bench him until you can see he's figured this out, which I think might be sooner than later.
Let's take a look at some of the other performances from Monday:
