The CttP Five: Most Desirable Trade Targets

#3  NICK FRANKLIN

With the Seattle Mariners having signed Robinson Cano to man second base until we can live on the moon and with the emergence of excellent young shortstop Brad Miller, the M’s have found themselves with a young and valuable trade chip in Nick Franklin. Franklin isn’t considered a plus defender, but can play a decent shortstop in a pinch. He didn’t exactly impress in his rookie tour in 2013, striking out in over 27% of his plate appearances, but he consistently posted rates below 20% through most of his time in the minors, and Steamer reads far enough into that to project that he’ll cut a full 7% from that rate in 2014. His little-of-everything skillset was good for 2.3 bWAR in 2013 and he walks at a decent clip. Franklin may not do anything exceptionally well (unfair; he’s actually a great baserunner), but he’s in his sophomore year and making the league minimum, he won’t be a free agent until 2020 and he plays a premium position passably. Add in the fact that even with the strikeouts he was a better-than-league-average hitter in 2013 at a position where worse-than-league-average is the norm, and the fact that since Omar Infante signed with the Royals there are basically no second basemen left anywhere, and you have a recipe for a great opportunity for Seattle to extract an excellent value for their young and newly expendable keystone player.