What were you doing when you were 17 years old? I have two vivid memories from 17. The first was seeing Titanic 23 times because that’s what every other 17-year-old girl I knew wanted to do and you’re darn right I was going to be there for them to hold when that old couple cuddles in the bed while the water is rising. The second was getting pulled over on Halloween by the police because my friends and I were driving around waving a plastic bat at kids as we drove by. Real mature stuff.
What I was NOT doing at 17 years old was hitting .351/.418/.587 for a professional baseball team. Wander Franco actually had that covered so I didn’t have to.
Franco’s Legendary Minor League Career
That’s right. In 273 plate appearances for the Tampa Bay Rays’ rookie affiliate, Franco smoked those fools while also striking out only seven percent of the time. That performance and his subsequent .318/.390/.506 line in A-ball earned him headlines like “MLB’s next can’t-miss kid.”
He was then, like all minor-leaguers, forced to miss the 2020 season. Did that slow him down? Not one bit. In 40 games in Triple-A in 2021, he smashed the league for a .313/.372/.583 line before he was called up as a 20-year-old. He was such a can’t miss prospect that his rookie card sold for $198,000 before he even stepped foot on a Major League field.
That’s little more than 0.1% of the value of the contract Franco would then sign shortly after his 2021 debut. The Rays locked him in for 11 years and $182 million guaranteed which at the time looked like a steal because Franco would still only be 31 at the end of that deal.
His 2021 debut was very solid. Franco posted a .288/.347/.463 line over more than 300 plate appearances including seven bombs and a couple of steals. But then 2022 happened and the fantasy baseball world was forced to gird their collective loins about the young shortstop heading into 2023.
Franco’s 2022 Defined by Injuries
Franco only made it on the field for just over half of Tampa Bay’s games in 2022 (83 games, 344 plate appearances). From a fractured hand to a sore shoulder to biceps inflammation to a nagging hamstring issue, Franco hit all the high points of the WebMD profile last season.
Credit to him, because I would be straight dead if all those things happened to me over the course of seven months. But you kind of want your 21-year-old, $182 million investment to be the paragon of health, at least for a few prime years.
The injuries caused the slash line to tumble to .277/.328/.417 in 2022. But he played just nine games in June and July and missed most of the last two months of the season. Should we sweat injuries heading into 2023? Sure, but I’m here to tell you that if Franco is on the field for 130+ games this season, it’s breakout time.
2023 is Franco’s Breakout Year
Despite the litany of injuries Franco suffered in 2022, it’s incredible what he was still able to accomplish. Mainly, his ability to make contact and avoid strikeouts remained ultra-elite. Among players with at least 300 plate appearances last season, Franco’s 9.6% strikeout rate was third-best in the league behind only Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan. His zone contact rate (94.2%) ranked fifth among all players (adding Miguel Rojas and Isiah Kiner-Falefa to Arraez and Kwan). But what separates Franco from that group is those are all contact, slap-hitters with no power. Franco’s .140 ISO was the highest among all players with at least an 11% strikeout rate or better.
In fact, if you extrapolate that out further, we start to get a clearer picture of how unique Franco is. If we look at all players’ stats between the start of the 2021 season to the end of the 2022 season, there are 15 guys who struck out between 8% and 12% of the time – essentially the best of the best at making contact. Among those 15 players, Franco’s .156 ISO is far and away the highest among that group over the two seasons.
Among those 15 players, there are exactly two who have double-digit steals and home runs since the start of the 2021 season as well: Nico Hoerner and Wander Franco.
Because injuries sapped some of his barrel rate and exit velocity last season, Franco’s expected stats show that his .277/.328/.417 line from 2022 should have been much better. Baseball Savant lists him with a .285 expected batting average. Even with multiple injuries, being sent up and down levels in his professional career, and taking 2020 completely off from baseball, Franco has not lost his ability to make contact, his ability to get on base, and his ability to avoid strikeouts.
What Should We Expect in 2023?
I recently filled out one of those “Bold Predictions” pieces that fantasy analysts love to post for clicks, and one of the questions on it was “Who will be the player to hit .300 for the first time?” Without hesitation, I wrote down Franco’s name. It’s coming, and I believe it will be this season. All the major projection systems plug Franco in the same neighborhood. All say he will hit between .280 and .288. All say he will hit about 15 home runs and all say he will steal a dozen bases.
If we just look at Steamer projections, for example, they put him exactly there at .287/.349/.448 with 15 homers and 12 steals. Steamer projects 25 players to hit at least .280 in 2023. Of those 25, they project 10 of them to hit double-digit home runs and steal double-digit bases. Of those 10 players, four of them are shortstops: Trea Turner, Bo Bichette, Tim Anderson, and Franco. Turner and Bichette are, of course, universally considered first-round selections this season. Anderson and Franco go after pick 80. Why is that again? Are we so afraid of some fluky injuries that we are letting a consensus .280/15-homer/12-steal floor player last until the seventh round or later?
Franco’s ADP in NFBC drafts has stayed consistent over January, February, and March. It has hovered around pick 85 and the 10th shortstop off the board all year. That seems reasonable considering the worry about the injuries from last season. But to me, this is a floor .285/15-homer/10-steal player. If we can get a consistent season in, I would not be surprised one bit to see him post a .300/20-homer/15-steal campaign.
Exactly two players reached those milestones last season: Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve, with Trea Turner falling just short. A “can’t-miss kid” he still might be, especially considering this will be his age-22 season. He could frankly keep getting better over the next three or four years, and it wouldn’t be out of line with elite prospects’ Major League growth.
I do believe this is the last time for the next eight to ten years that we see Franco going after pick 80 in drafts – if he can just avoid the injury bug that is so rampant down in the Tampa Bay waters.
