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Checking in on Nick Franklin
How Franklin Should Hit All The Time Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports
Nick Franklin has been awesome. I acquired him in a trade in fantasy baseball a month or so ago and recently texted the other owner and received this response- “Fuck Nick Franklin”. For me, that is reason enough to love him, but he is also pretty good on the Mariners as well as my fantasy team. A month or so ago I wrote about his splits, and how weird they are. Franklin is a switch hitter, but there is reason to expect him to give that up. Quite simply, he is a much better hitter left-handed than right-handed.
I wanted to say that in the previous article, but since he had only 20 AB’s at the time it would have been kind of irresponsible for me to assume. But no longer! There is a big enough sample size for me to say this- “Nick Franklin should not hit right handed ever again!” Whew, that felt really good to say, but backing it up should be much more fun.
Season
Split
G
AB
PA
H
1B
2B
3B
HR
R
RBI
BB
IBB
SO
HBP
SF
SH
GDP
SB
CS
AVG
2013vs R as L
40
113
127
33
19
8
0
6
6
20
14
0
29
0
0
0
0
0
0
.292
2013vs L as R
28
58
62
13
9
3
0
1
1
4
3
0
15
0
1
0
1
0
0
.224
As fellow blogger (he dislikes this moniker) Brian Elsner likes to say- BOOM!
Sorry about the information overload, I will simplify that table for you and turn it into ratios since he has twice as many AB’s as a lefty than as a righty.
| K% | BB% | OPS | |
| Right-handed | 24.2% | 11.4% | .596 |
| Left-handed | 22.8% | 4.8% | .892 |
Look at that OPS difference. Right handed, Nick Franklin is like Pete Kozma or Elvis Andrus, that’s a much worse comparison this year than last year. Left-handed Franklin is in the top 30 in the league in OPS. I know platoon splits play an issue in all this, but it is difficult to see Franklin having an OPS of Pete Kozma when he hit matches up lefty against lefty. If nothing else, it is worth a try to try and boost Franklin’s value.
Simply, Franklin is a very valuable piece in the Mariners’ future. The team should be doing everything they can to maximize his value. So, it seems worthy of an attempt to make Franklin face left-handed pitchers as a left-handed batter. It is tough to do worse than he is hitting from the right-handed side against left-handed pitchers.