It's been an interesting first full season in the majors for Maikel Franco. While it seems he's slumped much of the year, swinging out of his shoes and getting himself out with regularity, here we are in the middle of August and he has 22 home runs.
Franco's 22nd longball gave the Phillies a 5-4, come-from-behind win over the Dodgers on Thursday night (see Instant Replay). With nobody out and a man on base in the seventh inning, he hit a 419-foot home run to center field. It landed in almost the exact same spot where Ryan Howard hit one out three innings earlier.
"Fastball right there in the middle and I put good contact on it," Franco said.
Franco is on pace for 29 homers and 94 RBIs. But he's also hitting just .250 with a .305 on-base percentage. There's a delicate balance between trying to rein him in and letting him be himself. Is there a way for him to be more selective at the plate while still maintaining an aggressive power stroke?
"For all of the swings and misses and expanding the strike zone, he comes up big an awful lot," manager Pete Mackanin said. "You can’t deny the numbers he’s put up. He’s played solid defense. He just needs to have better plate discipline. I don’t know if he’s pull-conscious or not, but he’s really not covering the whole plate like we’ve seen him do in the past. We’ll just have to wait and see, but I think he’ll do better as the year goes on and finish up strong."
Howard is finishing up strong as he plays out the final six weeks of his Phillies career. The home run Thursday was his 19th of the season, his third in his last four starts and his fifth in nine August games. He's hitting .357 since the All-Star break.
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Howard is a humble guy who tends to downplay his own success. Most baseball players do, either as a way to avoid coming across as cocky or out of superstition that speaking something into existence may cause it to change. Still, this is the best run he's been on in years and that's impossible to overloook.
"I think people lose track. Baseball is considered a game of failure," Howard said. "You know, you have ups, you have downs. Yeah, I had a bad month (in May). I’ve been doing this for 12, 13 years, whatever it’s been. You’re going to have good days and you’re going to have bad days. You just have to stick with it.
"I got a great piece of advice from a future Hall of Famer named Jim Thome. He said, you know, stay even-keeled, don’t get too high and don’t get too low. That’s what this game is. Some days it happens, some days it doesn’t. That’s something that’s always stuck with me. He told me that many years ago."
A knock on Howard for years was that he simply didn't adjust. He kept swinging the way he always did, he kept approaching at-bats the way he always did, even though his steep decline phase had set in and the results weren't there.
Over the last two months, Mackanin has seen genuine adjustments made to his game.
"He looks like he’s seeing the ball a lot better," Mackanin said. "He’s made some adjustments to his swing path. He looks more spread out than he has been, reverting back to the way he used to hit. He’s made a lot of adjustments and he’s been working hard to get there. But, knock on wood, he’s not swinging at a lot of pitches and expanding the strike zone like we’ve seen him do. It’s just great to see. He’s going to get more playing time because of it."
The homers from Franco and Howard mattered only because starting pitcher Jerad Eickhoff settled in and kept the Phillies in the game after a shaky first inning. Chase Utley and Corey Seager greeted him with singles to start the opening frame and Justin Turner followed with a towering, Citizens Bank Park-aided home run to left field. Just like that it was 3-0 Dodgers, and it looked like an overworked Phillies bullpen would be forced into four or more innings again.
But Eickhoff has been the Phils' most reliable and durable starting pitcher all season, and he beared down to complete six innings for the 16th time in his 25 starts. Eickhoff has a 3.91 ERA on the season and is on pace for 199 innings. Getting so close to 200 innings would be quite a feat for Eickhoff, especially given the mounting injuries and struggles to the Phillies' other young starting pitchers.
"I know last year the total was maybe 185 or close to 190," Eickhoff said. "I feel like I could [reach 200]. If I'm blessed to get around there or a little higher I'd be more than happy to do that.
"It's what a starting pitcher should look to do, at least I look to do. I want to throw as many innings as I can. The more innings you throw in a year, that means you're doing something right and getting deep into games. Got a handful of starts left and just try to keep pushing forward."
The Phillies will face just as many questions with their starting rotation this offseason as they faced last winter, if not more. Aaron Nola will be coming off an elbow injury and a series of poor starts. Vince Velasquez will be coming off a season filled with extreme highs but a fair number of lows. Jake Thompson, barring a complete turnaround, will be wondering whether he can consistently get outs at this level. Zach Eflin and Mark Appel will be coming off season-ending injuries.
Eickhoff, though, has taken the ball every fifth day and grown as a pitcher in 2016. He's one of the few players the Phils can feel like they've learned about in this rebuilding year. Even if he's a No. 4 starter long term, there is value in pitching 200 innings with an ERA in the mid to high 3.00s.
"I've learned a lot," Eickhoff said. "Whether it's sequencing or just the hitters themselves. Just learning how to approach a game and work a lineup. There's times when it's smart to walk a guy to get to the next guy and play the numbers game from that aspect. There's stuff I've been able to learn with help from (pitching coach) Bob McClure and Chooch (Carlos Ruiz) and (Cameron) Rupp and even Howie (Ryan Howard) at times. It's been a nice experience."
"He’s got a bulldog mentality," Mackanin said of Eickhoff. "He means business when he goes out there. When he has good fastball command he’s really good. Tonight it wasn't the greatest and he got burnt, but he threw an awful lot of great curveballs. He made Utley (1 for 4, strikeout) look bad a couple of times."
That he did. Even if those outs weren't punctuated with curtain calls.
