In 2015, Maikel Franco was one of the few bright spots on a team that was among the worst in team history. He only heightened expectations for his having a good to great season in 2016 by launching nine home runs in 68 spring training at bats. That performance, coupled with his previous year’s numbers (.280/.343/.497 in 335 PA), led many to think he had figured out major league pitching and would have a monster season. With so few offensive weapons on the roster, Franco was being counted on to carry the offense in a way he may not been asked to do on another team.

When looking back at his final 2016 line, however, one can’t help but have a sense of disappointment. His slash line of .255/.306/.427 are statistical drops across the board. His 25 home runs and 88 RBI paper over some flaws, but even still, he didn’t produce the way many prognosticators thought he might. He walked only fourteen more times than in 2015, yet he had almost double the plate appearances. He struck out at a slightly higher rate (16.8%) than his previous season. While he was admittedly unluckier than in 2015 (.271 BABIP in 2016 v. .297 in 2015), he still would flail at pitches that made the average Phillies fan throw down their cheesesteak in anger.

So what happened?

It’s tough to say. He may have been experiencing a slight sophomore slump as pitchers studied video of him. On the surface, the numbers don’t really reveal anything glaring either. But as I looked through his season more deeply, there was something that jumped out at me - pitchers’ approach to a Franco at bat. What I mean is, in 2015, prior to his wrist injury, pitchers had started pitching Franco with a clear mandate: throw him more fastballs than offspeed or breaking pitches. Once he adjusted to this, then pitchers adjusted back. It was a game of cat and mouse until he broke his wrist in mid-August:

The August numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt as the sample size is more than half of any other month in the chart, but you can see that pitchers began to recognize his ability to hit fastballs and compensated with more offspeed/breaking stuff.

2016 brought much of the same approach. Throw him more of the breaking and offspeed stuff, avoiding the fastball. They were finding success with this approach as well. Then a curious thing happened. Look at what happens in July:

Let’s break Franco season into two halves: April through June, and July through September. We’ll do this because maybe it’ll explain why they changed. If he’s crushing the ball, might as well try something different. I should note here that I am combining October numbers with the September numbers since on the chart you see above, mostly because the sample size is so small when compared to the other months. Here are his numbers for these splits:

April - June: .243/.302/.435, 13 HR, 41 RBI, 23 BB, 57 K in 305 PA

July - September: .266/.311/.420, 12 HR, 47 RBI, 17 BB, 49 K in 325 PA

What are the differences? Well, I see about the same power, fewer walks, but also fewer strikeouts. Are there other changes? He was getting luckier on balls in play for the second half (.283 vs. .257 BABIP), which accounts for the rise in batting average, but other than that, there is no real difference in his numbers. So what happened? Why did pitchers make such a drastic adjustment? There isn’t much change in exit velocity during the year, at least not enough that pitchers would see he’s hitting their pitches harder:

If nothing else, he started hitting hard stuff harder. In fact, using Fangraphs’ splits tool, we can see that in July, he started hitting more line drives off of various types of fastballs than he was before This type of contact has a better chance of falling in for hits. so it makes no sense:

Throwing Franco roughly 5% more fastballs through the rest of the season when you’ve had success the other way is a significant change. Why were there more fastballs being thrown? Did Franco start heating up against the offspeed/breaking, necessitating a change? Was he assaulting the offspeed/breaking stuff with more authority? Not that I could see. According to the indispensable baseballsavant.com, Franco performed much worse against offspeed/breaking stuff from July 1 to September 30 (.192) than he did from April 1 to June 30 (.235). Counter that with the fact that during these time periods, he hit demonstrably better against fastballs as the season wore on (.235 in the 1st half vs. .297 in the 2nd half). There’s no statistical reason for them to change their approach. So again we ask, why? Why change approaches? My conclusion:

I just don’t know.

I know that’s a cop-out answer, but truly, based on the evidence I’ve looked at, I don’t see a real reason. There is probably a litany of scouting reports available that we as fans will never see. The tools we do have available to us are baby steps when compared to the information teams have available behind closed doors. There is probably a rock solid reason why more of the straight stuff was being sent his way. We just don’t have it right now.

Listen, I’m not complaining. Even though he was disappointing overall in 2016, there were some positives to take away, especially from his second half. He struck out less. His luck was balancing itself out. The power didn’t suffer a summer swoon. Frankly, I believe he’ll be alright. Should we make adjustments to our expectations going forward? Probably. But I wonder if the league realizes their change in approach was unnecessary, if he’ll be able to adjust back to them. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on next season.