Welcome to Seattle, Nick
Dave · June 9, 2009 at 5:26 pm · Filed Under Mariners
I’m not worried about you – you’ll sign.
I like the Nick Franklin pick for the M’s (and, tooting my own horn here, I believe I’m the first one who put the M’s on him last week) as a switch-hitting shortstop with average tools across the board, giving him the ability to stay at shortstop long term and provide some nice offensive abilities. He might not be a super high upside guy, but he’s got a good approach at the plate, he’s strong fundamentally, and he’s got a chance to be an above average major league shortstop. As the current roster shows you, having a switch-hitting middle infielder who can play defense and not be a black hole can be a hugely valuable thing.
Good job, fellows. I like both picks so far.
Hmmm. So much for drafting above slot at 27.
Let me be the first to go way out on a limb and say he hasn’t got the arm to play shortstop.
But it’s not like he’s got Chase Utley standing in his way preventing him from playing second.
Does this mean they go BAP at 33 instead of Baron?
Nice pick. We need some infield depth. Good call, Dave!
At 27, don’t you shoot for more than average arm, average range, average athleticism, average bat?
I’m not a scout, but he looks like just a guy.
Average across the board is a good player.
Potential average shortstop = valuable.
The Mariners have been drafting athletes with upside forever. The team needs baseball players. Franklin is a baseball player.
Let me go out on a limb and say thank you Dave for the time today and the draft days to follow.
It is great to be able to be informed about the later picks.
Thanks
Wouldn’t you rather have a SS who could field and bats .245 than Yuni? A switch hitter average shortstop sounds very appealing to me.
“Average” does not mean “mediocre”. A league average shortstop is a pretty valuable player, as TIF says.
It’s interesting that Washington, a LH 2B, went to the Rays just 3 spots after Franklin. So there were other MI available (or at least other founding fathers — get Jefferson and Adams and complete the set!) But an SS is more valuable than a 2B, everything else being equal, and a switch hitter is a bit better than a lefty bat (though I don’t know whether Franklin hits better LH or RH). Is Franklin likely to stick at SS?
Franklin reminds me quite a bit of Jed Lowrie. Patient hitter, good-but-not-great tools pretty much across the board, and just all around someone who screams “baseball player” when you watch him play, unlike some of the super-prospects who are mostly high-upside athletes moreso than pure ballplayers.
Given how much I’ve stumped to try to get Lowrie (or someone much like him) in the past year and a half or so, I’m very happy with this pick. Little bummed that one of the better arms didn’t drop (besides Scheppers, but I wasn’t sure about him one way or the other), but happy otherwise.
Will he stick at short? Maybe, maybe not. I think a lot of that depends on whether or not Triunfel winds up needing to move to third, as has been discussed. Even if he moves to second, he can still be an excellent asset to the organization.