The Best and Worst of Maikel Franco

Maikel Franco had one of the better games in baseball Tuesday. Facing the Diamondbacks, he came up in the third inning and doubled, and then he came up in the fifth inning and homered. It’s extraordinarily difficult to have a bad game when you hit a home run. It’s almost impossible to have a bad game when you homer and double. The Phillies would take that performance eight days a week — Franco’s single-game wRC+ easily cleared 300.

There was just one little thing, though. Franco’s a young power hitter, so the fact that he had two extra-base hits shows that that was Franco at his best. Yet there was also a sighting of Franco at his worst. In the end, the Phillies won, and Franco did do his damage, so spirits are high. But Franco did something that’s hard to forget.

If you watched, you remember. That much, I’m sure of. I wasn’t watching, but thankfully Jason Mitchell brought this to my attention. I couldn’t not write, so, let’s get right into this. Behold Maikel Franco attempting a swing:

Two things are simultaneously true. One, the camera angle is a little off, so the image is slightly deceptive. Can’t ignore that. But, two, good god, bad swing. You know how you can tell that’s a bad swing? Look at how far Franco’s arms are extended. Look at how badly he’s missing the ball. And look at the catcher — it’s always instructive to look at the catcher. The catcher is reaching way across his body, which shows you the pitch missed, and it missed away. The catcher wanted something near the plate. This pitch wasn’t near the plate. According to the tracking, the ball crossed the front plane about 28 inches from the middle of the plate. The plate is 17 inches wide, which means the outer edge is 8.5 inches from the middle. We have a swing at a pitch 19 inches outside. How much is 19 inches? Get an ordinary piece of paper. Then get a second piece of paper and arrange it next to the other. Have one of the papers in landscape, and the other paper in portrait. There are your 19 inches, basically. Hitting is difficult, but hitting shouldn’t be this difficult.

There’s more, too. How about the context of the swing? I’ll reveal this in pieces.

I mean, no one wants to attempt a bad swing, but it’s not a big deal if you attempt a bad swing in a blowout. Blowouts allow the baseball to be a little more relaxed, a little more cavalier. This wasn’t a blowout! This was a tie. The outcome was very much yet to be decided. And:

…the bases were loaded, in the ninth inning. Tie game, ninth inning, bases full. It’s not really clear from this but there was nobody out. The fact that there was nobody out would’ve slightly reduced the pressure on Franco, since that leaves three outs to give, but the play log puts the Leverage Index of the plate appearance at 3.01. Remember that an average Leverage Index is 1.00. This trip to the plate was something like three times more important than usual, and that swing was attempted. Now I might as well complete the picture.

Tie game. Ninth inning. Bases loaded. Nobody out. Full count. That’s the full context. A strike, and Franco would be out, and the Phillies would be a third of the way to frittering away the opportunity. A ball, and the Phillies would be ahead! Franco would walk, and a run would score, and the Phillies would move in front 4-3. Brad Ziegler threw a pitch more than a foot and a half away from the plate’s outer edge. Ziegler messed up. Franco messed up worse.

I’m going to borrow an image from Texas Leaguers. Here’s the trajectory of the pitch, as if viewed from above:

I added the red line. The red line is along the outer edge of the plate, and it intersects the trajectory line just beyond the 25-foot mark. The point is that the pitch practically never looked like a strike. It was already out of the zone when it was about halfway to home. Hitters, of course, can’t wait very long before they commit to a swing, on account of baseballs go fast, but these swings are unusual, because hitters have discipline. What’s extra weird is that Franco has even improved his own discipline over time. In this case, old habits got the best of him.

The Gameday Classic screenshot sure is something.

Nothing but breaking balls. Six consecutive breaking balls, all with similar velocities and movements. Even crazier, Franco fell behind 1-and-2, then he laid off two straight breaking balls away. Those pitches were almost identical to the pitch that Franco chased. He knew the right thing to do, once. He knew the right thing to do, twice. Then he caved. He knew what the breaking ball looked like, and he caved. It’s better as video.

Starting with the 1-and-2 count:

You can see that Franco thought about swinging. It’s not like he identified the pitch and spit on it right out of Ziegler’s hand. But Franco did hold up, and that evened the count. Said Steve Berthiaume on the Arizona broadcast:

This is an at-bat, Bob — when the Diamondbacks were at Citizens Bank Park in this situation, Franco would’ve taken some wild swings and be done in three pitches, but he’s much more selective here.

This is funnier now. The next pitch in the sequence:

Franco wanted that one. He wanted to swing, again, but he caught himself, again, and from his body language, you can read that he wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that he has to be careful. Reading body language is always speculative, and that’s another way of saying “stupid,” but the way I see it, Franco knew that he almost chased, and then he needed to take a breath. It would’ve been half self-congratulation, and half self-punishment. One more pitch to go. Franco needed to be disciplined about it.

He was simply tempted one too many times. It happens to all of us. I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid eating crap, because it’s not good to eat crap, and we all get older. Most of the time, I have my willpower, but at the Staten Island Yankees saberdork event the other weekend, they provided free cookies and brownies, and I gave in. It wasn’t worth it, of course, but sometimes a person just loses control. Think about Randal Grichuk working hard on his discipline earlier this season to try to avoid chasing outside sliders. It worked for a little while, but instincts are instincts. Credit to Welington Castillo for reading Franco in this at-bat. Not that Castillo wanted that last pitch to be so far outside, but Castillo figured that Franco would hack. He figured that the pressure would get the best of Franco’s attempts at discipline. Franco doesn’t usually struggle in higher-pressure situations, but every case is different, and here, Franco tried too hard to make something happen. Castillo and Ziegler exploited that. Shortly thereafter, they lost, but they didn’t lose this singular encounter.

Just how wild was the swing? Baseball Savant comes to the rescue. Other hitters haven’t done what Franco did. Look at this plot for 2016. This shows all right-handed swings in three-ball counts with the bases loaded. Franco’s swing is in red.

That’s the most outside by more than eight inches. By more than eight inches! Hitters know to be disciplined in these situations. Franco’s discipline took the pitch off. Now we can expand the window. Going back all the way to 2008:

It’s a sample of more than 3,500 swings. Almost all of them are clumped around the strike zone. Franco’s swing still stands out — it’s the most outside pitch in the sample, by five and a half inches. Almost half a foot. To the next-nearest horizontal location. At least in recent history, given the context, that swing was unprecedented. Sure, with two strikes, Franco needed to protect, but with three balls and the bases loaded, one pitch out of the zone was as good as the go-ahead run. I’ve been thinking about this for a few hours, and I find it increasingly unbelievable. Franco isn’t even some lousy role player. He’s a quality regular and one of the Phillies’ most prized young assets. He swung how a literal blind person might swing. He swung how literally you might swing. Although even literally you might have the good sense to just take the pitch and hope for the best.

Maikel Franco homered, Maikel Franco doubled, and the Phillies beat the Diamondbacks by a run. If it weren’t for Franco, the result could’ve been completely different. And if it weren’t for Franco, the game might’ve been utterly forgettable. As things were, Franco took a swing I might genuinely never forget.