In boxing, there are fast hands and there are heavy hands. You either generate your power via speed, or that undefinable “something” that comes from technique and muscle. Very few have heavy, fast hands, but Nick seems to – the Sugar Ray of his weight class. And his knockout power is gonna start to scare people away from that inside part of the plate. As a lefty it’s a perfect mix of a beautiful swing AND great hand-and-wrist control (which again, few hitters have). Seager has a simple swing that lets him get the bat to almost everything. Ackley has a long, wristy swing (that is causing him some trouble still) where – when he’s on - he uses incredible hand-eye coordination to pull the bat through the zone and adjust on the fly to make flush contact.
Franklin has both. He takes reaction swings and adjusts while he’s swinging, yet can still square up a ball and drive it 360 even if he initially guessed wrong on a pitch. His swing plane is gorgeous, his mid-flight instinctual adjustments uncanny. Look, there are 3 “rookies” with double-digit homers so far this year: Nick, some dude named Puig (and his .450 BABIP), and Evan Gattis, a 26 year old C/OF in the Ryan Doumit mold (who’s got about 60 pounds on Franklin). With those guys (and most other interesting rooks) in the NL, Nick is putting his AL ROY chase into high gear.
Can he keep it up? Well, if you were a pitcher, and somebody handed you that hot-zone chart, what would you think? “Do NOT miss in over the plate, if you’re gonna get it down get it WAY down, and pound him away,” right? Because if you miss over the plate with most middle-infielders you cost yourself a baserunner. With Franklin you might cost yourself a game. Ackley, in 2011, was squaring up his share, and stinging the ball, but he wasn't clearing fences and jogging the bases. Franklin may hit more HRs this year than Ackley has hit in 3 years combined.
Nick already strikes out quite a bit (23.3% of the time in the bigs against 19.3% in the minors) as he tries to react to better pitchers, more detailed attack plans, and all the rest of the major league adjustments that have to be made. Still just seems like a learning curve to me. He racked up 30 walks against 20 Ks in Tacoma this year as AAA pitchers were legitimately terrified of him. Zunino scared them too, but Zunino was willing to chase. Nick might miss, but he’s not much of a chaser. But can he succeed with “only” pull HR power?
Ted Williams was a pull hitter (extremely so) and he did all right. Many great hitters have been. You don’t have to use the whole field for power in order to be great, you just have to maximize your damage in plate appearances, which Nick does. With his ability to clobber mistake pitches as a lefty (he has a .290/ .365/ .560/ .925 line against RHP) he’s not gonna lose the ability to put a hurt on somebody. He has a lot to learn, yet, but second basemen with 25-HR power don’t come along every day. In fact, here’s the list of everyone who’s done it more than once (to eliminate fluke seasons and look only at legit power threats):
Multiple 25-HR seasons at second base:
Bret Boone (2)
Bobby Doerr (2)
Edgardo Alfonzo (2)
Ian Kinsler (2)
Joe Morgan (2)
Ray Durham (2)
Aaron Hill (3)
Alfonso Soriano (4)
Brandon Phillips (3)
Chase Utley (4)
Damion Easley (3)
Robinson Cano (4)
Rogers Hornsby (5)
Ryne Sandberg (5)
Joe Gordon (5)
Jeff Kent (6)
Dan Uggla (6)
Ryne Sandberg (6)
If you wanna have fun, go through the list and tell me who the fast-hands guys were, and who are the heavy handed ones. In the just missed column, Biggio and Whitaker both had multiple seasons between 20 and 25 HRs (and just one year over that mark) but most everybody else on this list remains the same. If you have 20 HR power you almost always have 25 HR power in at least a couple of years.
Who’s the worst player on this list? Damion Easley with his ~20-ish WAR? Aaron Hill is a little better, but still has his decline phase to go. If Franklin is a 20-to-25-HR kind of second baseman (he’s currently pro-rating to 30+ as a rookie) then Easley/Phillips would be his likely floor. That’s a scary-high floor. If he hits his upside, OTOH… then Nick isn’t blowing smoke when he talks about his desire for a HOF career, because that would be some kind of Sandberg career. It's hard to throw stones at that list without hitting HOFers and HOF-pace careers (for the early years, anyway). Feel free to bet the bottom and enjoy the growth toward the top as a pull-power, switch-hitting second baseman who looks like an offensive force for years to come – with a good glove to boot.
-----Said All That to Say -----
He's not Ackley. His swing isn't that kind of complicated. Yes, Franklin adjusts a lot with his hands, but where Ackley is forcing the bat to bend to his will (which it is stubbornly refusing to do), Nick is one with the bat. I'm not kidding about his Jedi-mind-trick stuff when he's pulling the hand off and encouraging the ball to fly where he wants.
He's also not Seager. Kyle does it with incredible simplicity. He's the Amish Carpenter of the 2015 Mariners World Series champs, while Franklin's millisecond by millisecond adjustments of his approach to target (but not his swing, which is where Ackley falls down) are a different animal than the open-shut door hinge that Seager uses. Luckily Franklin's in the right headspace to make the needed corrections as he goes, and his hands trust what his eyes see. It's not perfect unity yet, but it will be.
Ackley has a complicated mechanism, Seager has a simple one, and Franklin is making art. Funny how a kid who supposedly had no tools somehow turns into the Natural, with skills you can't teach and a swing you should never mess with.
Nick Franklin isn't about to fall off a cliff - he's just getting started. And he himself would no doubt tell you everything is unfolding exactly as he had foreseen.
Kinda scary... for everybody else.
~G