Now, the word of caution on Franklin.
There was this SS that played for a rival of ours. He was hyped through the roof as a 20 year old. He'd posted a .726 in the MWL at 19 (similar to Adam Jones, though Jones was 18) and blown up the Cal League the following year (far more so than Jones did). He was gonna be moved to 3rd, but his bat sure looked like it would hold up there.
For his minor league career he hits Lefties and Righties pretty equally and both over .900 OPS. His home and away splits are pretty neutral, and also .900ish. His BB:K is .38, which is bad but not atrocious. His AB:K is 3.7 which is very bad, especially for the minors, but his ISO is .277, so he should be able to power the ball out even if his OBP is a bit lackluster and he strikes out too much.
The last few years his away numbers have been pretty pedestrian while his home numbers are inflated by being in a major hitters park in AAA, but even his away numbers show a fairly consistently high ISO. A low-walk hitter can get away with it if he has high power and can hold a decent average.
Unfortunately for them, his major league OPS is in the .400s. He's atrocious. It doesn't look like he'll ever hit. They reworked his swing and it got worse. He's drowning in the bigs even though he's apparently a hard worker and not a bad guy, and no one knows how to help him.
That prospect is Brandon Wood.
It's only worse for Angels fans because he was the successor to Dallas McPherson at the position. Dallas in the minors: .293/.379/.580/.959. Dallas in the bigs: .245/.298/.458/.756 (at a corner position). He also demolished the minors along the way with a .42 Eye, a 3.2 AB:K, and a .287 ISO.
There are monsters in the minors who just can't make it work in the bigs. Franklin's running some borderlines in his stats that bear watching, what with his .41 Eye and his 4.4 AB:K. He's better with the strikeouts than Wood or McPherson by a decent chunk, but it needs to stay that way against better pitchers with breaking balls.
Justin and I had an argument many years ago about AB:K in the minors and what it means in the majors. It was over Leone, I think. He pointed out that while there were exceptions to the rule, it was a HUGE longshot for a guy like Ryan Howard to make it. 4:1 was the minimum acceptable limit in the minors in his mind, and 5:1 gave you some flexibility to drop a little in the bigs without falling off a cliff. Adam Dunn in the bigs: 3.1. In the minors? 4.5...AND he walks a ton.
I've come around to Justin's POV on this one: 4:1 at-bats per strikeout is a pretty useful Mendoza line for that stat, and you'd like your prospects to move away from it, not closer to it.
I'll just want to see Nick walk a little more next year, and at LEAST hold steady on Ks. Not being as abysmal against lefties would also help both of those issues.
Franklin isn't out of the woods (sorry for the pun) as a prospect just yet - he's chopping through those woods with a machete pretty easily so far though...and the recent guys who have done what he's done at the age and level he did it at have mostly gone on to great acclaim and pretty decent success.
Just can't help but be excited, I guess.
~G