Atlanta Braves NL East positional rankings: third base
Maikel Franco
If he hits .264 this season as forecast above, the city of Philadelphia ought to throw another parade… this one featuring only Franco.
Since bursting on the scene in 2015 for 80 games, Franco has hit .280 (2015), .255 (2016), and (.230). That’s a bad trend. He’s actually done this without being a free-swinger: never more than 17% strikeout rate.
Moreover, as his hitting has declined, so has his power numbers: slugging has declined from .497 to .427 and .409. Worst yet, his defense isn’t exactly Gold Glove caliber, either – definitely acceptable, but not spectacular.
The real problem could be that he simply isn’t the everyday player and run-producer that Philadelphia had hope to get.
Sure, homers are good, but as evidenced by Franco’s -0.5 fWAR in 2017, they (24 last season) just aren’t enough. Even looking at his splits, Franco was terrible in every month except September (.271)… and he only had 88 plate appearances, the fewest of any month of the year.
Thus, I don’t know that Franco is that 2.2 WAR producer. As it is, he was 3rd on his own team in WAR for 2017 compared to those also playing third base (Andres Blanco: -0.4 in 144PA; J.P Crawford +0.2 in 87 PA)… but none of this trio hit more than .230.
Honestly, these guys are probably placeholders for now… the Phillies have a ton of money to spend, and are probably waiting until next season to write those checks. They will go after a stud third baseman at some point – though whether they’re successful remains to be seen – there’s a lot of competition brewing for Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson.
But until then, it seems Franco’s splash had ended, and that ranks his Phillies…
5th in the NL East at third base
Hope Springs Eternal
Okay… Johan Camargo hit .299 over a (fairly significant) 256 plate appearances in 2017, nearly all of which happened after May.
Once he got regular playing time, he starting hitting – and hitting better as he went along and had more time at the plate.
In fact, here’s those 2017 numbers, sorted by PA’s per month:
- 4 – .250 (April)
- 7 – .143 (May)
- 22 – .263 (Aug)
- 56 – .321 (Sept/Oct)
- 72 – .313 (June)
- 92 – .295 (July)
- (Also: 85 – .324 (Dominican Winter League)
For reference, a full month will generally have about 28 games and 3.1 AB per game will qualify you for a batting title, so 87AB (or roughly 98 PA) is technically ‘full time’ (though a Freddie Freeman full time rate is 100-130 PA per month).
So Camargo got quite a number of quality ABs in 2017, but is he a solid everyday player or is he … Maikel Franco?
We’re probably going to find out this year, because barring a late signing, I expect Camargo to get a lot of playing time… with occasional spells from Rio Ruiz.
Even if he does wilt to the ZiPS numbers, though, Camargo is starting from a higher hitting plateau than Franco (though the latter player has more power), so I have to believe that he’ll be a better asset overall while we watch Austin Riley‘s every move at AAA.
Still, based on the expectations of some sort of platoon (which will likely hurt Ruiz’s acclimation to ML pitching), I can’t bring myself to rank the Braves anywhere above…