Juan Francisco Mashing it in Toronto

Towards the end of Spring Training I speculated that Milwaukee might lose Juan Francisco (although did not think it likely). I also advocated that they keep him. While he has defensive limitations I noted he was still relatively young, controllable, and could at least play more than 1B. But the rumors held true and the team chose former Brewer Lyle Overbay to platoon with Mark Reynolds and they granted Francisco his outright release.

Well after catching on in Toronto he has been mashing to a tune of .311/.403/.623 in 72 PA over 17 games. Granted the sample size is still small, this should not be a total surprise, considering after making some adjustments over the winter, Francisco was hitting .346 with 3 HR and 6 RBI in the spring when we let him go. Overbay is currently swatting .242/.324/.323 for the slumping Brewers offense.

Now I know offense is not everything, and defense matters. But Overbay, while being a natural 1B was not a defensive whizz by any means. He has a negative dWAR for this year and his career from B-R and has already committed 2 errors this year. Francisco's horrid defense last year should not be held against the guy when he had never played 1B before either. And in his limited action this year, he has a positive dWAR and no errors committed at 1st or 3rd.

Enough of my fears have taken place that made me want to keep Francisco: the offense is struggling and Ramirez has lost time to injury and slumping. When the team is thin, especially carrying two guys who can only play 2B, it is helpful to have both 1Bs be able to play multiple positions. And Francisco is still young and controllable. Ramirez is a free agent at year end and the team has no players close to competing there. Who do they plan on getting to play the position?

Now Francisco is set to regress. His K% and BABIP are both too high to sustain this production. But his strikeout percentage, while too high is still down 6% from last year's rate, and he's already walked 9 times (he walked a total of 32 times last year), his walk rate is up 4%. Those are positive signs that indicate he is trending in a positive direction, and even a more level BABIP should still result in a more balanced overall production on the year. Additionally being able to usually protect him from lefties in a platoon (career .261/.326/.483 hitter verses righties, .170/.202/.232 hitter against lefties) with Reynolds would also allow those numbers to stay stable, especially considering the extreme split he is currently showing: just .118/.111/.294 verses Lefties but a whopping .386/.500/.750 split against righties.

Hindsight is 20/20, I get that. But in fairness I advocated keeping Francisco before he started annihilating the ball for another team. The Brewer's offense could use him this year and in years to come. Right now we are riding on our pitching, but that doesn't last forever. We just lost against the Diamondbacks who have looked awful this year. The offense could not come through in the Cincinnati series either. Braun is on the DL, and the whole offense is slumping. Hopefully this day off will help. But if they had just kept Francisco, that would have done a lot too.