There has been a lot written and said about Maikel Franco‘s swing over the course of the season.  There have been talks about the shape and length as well as how much power it is going to generate.  Overall scouts have questioned how the swing as a whole will translate to the next level.  Franco has big time raw power and he has elite bat speed and hand eye coordination.  He has demonstrated the ability to make contact, but the quality of that contact has begun to come into question lately.  The goal is to explore if that is true and what that deterioration in contact might look like.

Contact Type:

So the first question is what kind of contact is Franco making.  Here is a break down of his percentages across each level Franco played at this year (sample size of 228, 249, and 88  balls in play respectively).

The first thing that jumps out is the spike in ground balls in AA that coincided with a drop in fly balls.  The next thing is that outside of a spike in winter ball, his line drive rate is very low (for example the lowest LD% among qualified 3B in 2013 was Todd Frazier at 18.1%), given that line drives have the highest probability of being hits, that is troubling.  The decline in flyball rate is troubling as well because that is where the HR power is coming from.  Overall it is an indication that Franco is not making the best contact possible, but given that minor league ball in play classifications can be off lets look at some spray charts. Continue reading Maikel Franco’s Contact →