Philadelphia Phillies: Three players that need to disappear

Three Philadelphia Phillies Players That Need to Disappear

Maikel Franco

At one time (June 22, 2015), Maikel Franco was the sort of promising young player who could make the Yankees regret, in their own house, walking the batter in front of him to face him instead. The young third baseman slammed an early pitch in that situation into the right-field seats. He later homered again in the Philadelphia Phillies11-8 win, driving in five altogether.

Back then, Franco was not yet 23 years old and seemed to have power to all fields as well as a potential Gold Glove in his locker. He was quick and picked up a rolling ball on the third baseline bare-handed as well as anyone ever had, then threw people out off his back foot.

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After six years with the Phillies, however, there has been no Gold Glove, and the Dominican native has barely cracked 100 career home runs. His fielding average is .002 below the league average although he is still able to make absolutely spectacular plays, bouncing off his left foot in foul territory to throw runners out at first.

He has never hit over .280 and never driven in more than 88 runs. He has also not benefited from the Phillies shift to an analytical approach in coaching, famously struggling with departed hitting coach John Mallee’s attempt to increase his launch angle in 2018. Franco finished that year with his career’s second-best OBP, but that figure was a fairly ho-hum .314.

In 2019 he was benched in favor of emerging super-utilityman Scott Kingery for the better part of August, and a fair amount of September.

He is currently arbitration-eligible but is widely thought to be done with the Phillies, having almost doubled his salary between ‘18 and ’19, then dropping 36 points in batting average, while hitting five fewer homers and driving in 12 fewer runs.

Next Spring

It is quite possible that all three of these players are invited to spring training next February, but it would be quite a surprise if all three would be, then, so impressive in Clearwater they would all make the roster. Pivetta, to pick one of them, already used up his false spring this year.