Happy Brother Brown day! "Mariners fans let me know I was going to blow that game." - reminiscing on the 17 inning game.-
Bens carved out a nice little place in baseball media for himself but Ive always found him a little boring and boy oh boy does he love talking about his brother.
France has decent stuff for a #5. his problem is just that when he misses, he misses middle middle often. He doesn’t pull the breaking ball glove side or overextend and throw it in the dirt. Instead, he puts the ball right down the launch pad often.
France has by far the lowest zone contact% of any SP on the team, and the second best Stuff+ rating of any SP on the team. He also has the lowest expected wOBA on contact (Bielak has the highest) of any SP on the team. So, he has been pretty tough to hit even on pitches located in the zone and when hitters have put the ball in play they typically don't do much damage. The early returns have been very encouraging for him.
While I agree with most of what you said, this may be misleading. He's giving up a ton of homers. I expect going forward, he'll give up fewer homers, but his doubles will go up (i.e., balls hit in play in the future will likely do a good deal damage on average).
His HR/FB rate is up there, but I think that's more noise than anything. His barrel/bbe rate is a little above league average but nothing crazy and less than both Javier's and Bielak's. I think with France there's also more upside in optimizing his pitch mix/sequencing given that he has 4-5 pretty good pitches.
Pay attention - Maldy is simply out playing him and had yesterday off. No way he sits back to back days. I could see these comments back in April when Maldy had an OPS of .484. But he has had an OPS of .747 in May. Diaz meanwhile has hit .558 and .556
He played once this rotation, that's all he gets. I think it's absurd that our top hitting prospect plays once a week while Corey Julks has consistently played 2/3 of the time with plenty of ugly stretches from the start, but it is what it is.
Bielak and Javier are giving up barrels beyond crazy. France's Barrel/bbe is well above league average (he's in the 75th percentile). It is Oakland A pitcher average. I think France has some upside, but he's giving up some great contact right now.
your spreadsheet numbers are cool and all, but I’m watching him continually give up bombs by throwing the ball right over the plate. It doesn’t matter if his contact numbers are low if they’re hitting it out consistently when they do barrel it up. like I said, his stuff is fine- but he’s giving up a lot of homers throwing the ball down the middle on accident. Overall he’s been excellent and performed better than we could have asked
How much have the Rangers turned around their pitching rotation in just 1 year? Martin Perez used to be their #1 starter and it wasn't close. This season, he's clearly their worst starter.
I'm not buying what you're selling. You're also the one that said you weren't worried about his near 1.5 whip, and soon after he imploded as predicted by that terrible whip he was carrying. I'd be excited if he ended the season with an era of 4.50.
Man you REALLY hate Corey Julks. As in he screwed my wife level hate. Meanwhile he's on pace for 75 runs scored and 75 RBIs if he was an everyday player. Michael Brantley type numbers.
