Myers, Lidle, Lieber, and......Ryan Franklin?

by Alex Falzone on Jan 5, 2006 10:30 AM EST in News

According to Jerry Crasnick of espn.com, the Phillies have signed RHP Ryan Franklin to a one-year, $2.6 million deal.

Color me unimpressed, which unfortunately continues a trend regarding every move GM Pat Gillick has made since his terrific Thome trade.

I've looked at The Baseball Cube, BP, Baseball Reference, and ESPN's stats page, and I honestly can't come up with anything worthwhile to put this move in a positive light. His K rate has dropped, his H/9 has gone up, he'll be 33 this season, his control keeps getting worse, and his G/F rate is below 1. See for yourself:

I guess you can attempt to hang your hat on the fact that he soaks up innings, but I look at that as a negative based on what I found above.

Want to be even more depressed? Look here, here, here, here, and lastly, here. Wondering about similar players? Look here and you'll find such luminaries as Bob Milacki, Scott Kamieniecki, and Elmer Dessens.

Also, this should put to rest the contention amongst a certain faction of Phillies phans that the Padilla move was part of some larger plan by Gillick and company to make the team better. Essentially, we traded Padilla for Franklin and approximately $1.5 million. Go Phils!

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Color me pissed off

I'm beyong unimpressed; I'm pissed off. Franklin is a terrible pitcher going from a drastic pitcher's park to a hitter's park. He's a flyball pitcher too. Can we expect a 6+ ERA? For $2.6M, what a bargain!

by David S. Cohen on Jan 5, 2006 10:33 AM EST reply actions

goodbye safeco, hello CBP!

The folks at USSMariner agree with you David.

Why are you guys so down on pitchers that don't get many strikeouts, like Ryan Franklin?

Franklin has value as a rubber-armed innings eater who can start and relieve. He's also well served by pitching in Safeco Field, since he's an extreme flyball pitcher, and Safeco is big. But a big part of his success or lack thereof is his defense and the ballpark in which he pitches.

by Alex Falzone on Jan 5, 2006 12:21 PM EST up reply actions

top five reasons this deal might not suck...

Turns out he's been pitching with the wrong arm the last two years
Franklin is a direct lineal descendant of Benjamin Franklin, and has figured out a way to harness the power of the lightning bolt within the strike zone
Horrific performance on the juice last year was just a smokescreen funded by the Office of National Drug Control Policy; this year, clean and sober, he's going 22-5, 2.17.
Five years ago, then-Seattle GM Pat Gillick planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Franklin's brain that contained the secret to the 2001 Mariners' 116-win season. That secret will now be revealed!

and the top reason this deal might not suck:

1) Paul Spoljaric, Paul Abbott... when it comes to ex-Mariners joining the Phillies rotation, third time's the charm.

by dajafi on Jan 5, 2006 11:57 AM EST reply actions

hat tip...

to our SBN sister site Lookout Landing.

They've sponsored Franklin's Baseball Reference page, with perhaps the greatest comment I've ever seen. Go check it out. Perhaps a year from now, this page will stay in the SBN family, with the exact same comment...

by dajafi on Jan 5, 2006 12:03 PM EST reply actions

Gillick says...

Per AP wire story:

"He's a competitor who pitches deep into ballgames and has been a consistent starter in the American League for the last few years," Phillies general manager Pat Gillick said. "His innings show that he's been durable and he definitely adds depth to our rotation."

At the least, I'd really like to hear something along the lines of, "Franklin got away from the delivery he used in 2003 and we think we can fix his mechanics to get him back to that level." Man, at this point even "He's a great influence on young pitchers" would sound good.

What bothers me is that they just don't seem to acknowledge the simple fact that he suuuuuuuuucks. "Durable" is meaningless for a pitcher if he's delivering crap innings in bulk.

by dajafi on Jan 5, 2006 3:17 PM EST reply actions

"a consistent starter"

I guess that's true. In the past 3 years, he's made 96 appearances; only 2 of those were in relief.

by David S. Cohen on Jan 5, 2006 4:10 PM EST up reply actions

Getting Franklin

A signing like this is really an insult. How is this guy going to improve this rotation? The only way this team is going to be competetive is to acquire someone who can improve the QUALITY of this rotation. In order to do that they are going to have to move either Abreu or Burrell. Nobody is enamored with Burrell so the only way they can make the rotation better is to move Abreu and possibly one of the kids they got in the Thome trade for hopefully a #2 starter that eats innings. The ideal fit would be someone like Derek Lowe. The Phils brass has to come to the realization that Abreu is the only tradable piece they have but it will take more than just him to acquire someone of Lowe's quality.

by sufferinphilsfan on Jan 5, 2006 3:22 PM EST reply actions

Lowe

I think he's a good pitcher and as a groundball guy he'd be a good fit in CBP. But I wouldn't trade Bobby for him straight up, much less as part of a package deal.

I don't blame Gillick at all for not dumping his best chip in an overheated pitching market. But the way you ride out of these, I think, is by exhausting your internal options. This is why I actually voted "yes" on the front page poll (the first one I didn't write, btw...) and part of the reason I'm so disgusted at this Franklin move.

by dajafi on Jan 5, 2006 5:42 PM EST up reply actions

M's Fan Here

I hate to come by these parts, but you guys just got pretty screwed signing Franklin. The only time he's come remotely close to putting up a good season was in 2003, when our local writers compared him to a young Roger Clemens (found article, but it's stuck in a purchase-only archive). The problem is he strikes out virtually nobody, his ERA was only low in 2003 because he was in a Safeco outfield with Ichiro, Mike Cameron, and Randy Winn (arguably the best outfield defense in the last decade), and when put into Citizen's Bank Park with Burrell, Abreu, an d Rowand, which isn't the worst defense ever, but certainly not great, he's bound to be even worse than 2005. His bad clubhouse attitude and blatant insistance on starting makes matters worse. Good luck.

by David J Corcoran on Jan 5, 2006 8:26 PM EST reply actions