Franco, Herrera finally showing signs of life
Two young power hitters starting to produce
PHILADELPHIA » All’s right in the Phillies’ world again, now that their two most capable/confounding run producers have stopped that irritating habit of only swinging at air.
So for the second day in a row, Odubel Herrera and Maikel Franco emerged from the recent shadows of plate puzzlement and tore into San Francisco pitching. Herrera had a home run, two doubles and three RBIs and Franco belted a ball into the bullpen in the eighth inning which would go down as a winning run as the Phillies beat the Giants 9-7 and thereby broke a 10-series losing streak that dated to late April.
A run like that will certainly ruin a baseball season before summer.
“We feel pretty good right now,” Franco said. “The last two games we showed a lot of energy.
We played the game the right way. That’s what we have to continue to do every single day. We have to do what we can do.”
Let the jury stay out for a while on that last message, because this ongoing Philadelphia rebuilding project promises to go on past this and other summers to come. It will take time to pick and choose among current players and the hyped prospects pushing them.
Herrera is likely here to stay beyond the anticipated completion date of this project, since he’s in the first season of a sixyear $30-million plus deal that added pressure during what for him was a lost month of May.
From lows of .217 with a .588 OPS while being benched three of four games prior to Saturday, Herrera has rebounded to .234 and has five extra-base hits in his last two games, good for a new OPS of .649.
Franco had similarly sunk to .209 at the start of a three-game road trip in Miami last week, and has since made comeback tracks to .223 and also a .649 OPS with seven homers and 29 RBIs.
Neither is where they should be, but then, when dealing with athletes, rebuilding projects usually only succeed the slow and steady way.
Which brings us to Freddy Galvis, who like Herrera and Franco has been all about streakiness at the plate during his career, but unlike them wasn’t quickly pegged as a longterm answer at his position. This despite Galvis’ earned stature as one of the best glove men at shortstop in the game.
While Herrera and Franco are still in their formative career years, Galvis is in his sixth season with the Phillies, though probably was never considered a true successor to Jimmy Rollins. Not big enough, not consistent enough, not a lot of things enough, Galvis continues to prove the predictors wrong while growing into Rollins’ old cleats with every passing game day.
To that end, Galvis launched two home runs Sunday, one right-handed in the second inning and one pulled as a lefty in the eighth inning, putting his own productive spin on this Phillies win. The last ambidextrous Phillies hacker to hit a home run from each side of the plate in the same game? That same Jimmy Rollins guy back on July 20, 2011 in Chicago.
“That’s my brother right there, man,” Galvis said, feeling the J-Roll connection. “Yeah it was pretty cool. The first time I do that in my life and I feel pretty good about it.
“I hit two homers before from the same side, but not the different sides of the plate. I think it’s awesome.”
So much so that Pete Mackanin, long a Galvis fan but also a consistent constructive critic of his shortstop’s tendency to try to hit balls out of the park rather than to all points in the park, was taken by what he saw from Galvis Sunday.
“What can you say about Freddy? A home run from both sides of the plate,” Mackanin said. But it wouldn’t be too long before someone pointed out that Galvis, despite the two homers on this day and a critical hit in Saturday’s win, is hitting only .236.
Mackanin has always exhibited the belief that his shortstop can hit for a better average, though Galvis’ career batting average is .240.
Combine that with a .982 fielding average thus far this season, and see his .982 career field average as a shortstop — where he’s played 397 of his 523 Phillies games — and the conclusion seems clear...
Unlike the would-be, still could-be Phillies building blocks Herrera and Franco, Galvis has looked exactly like the player he should be this season.
He is what he is, and since top-pushing-prospect J.P. Crawford has been steadily making his way through the minors at short the past few years ... the questions remain whether Galvis is only the shortstop of the present, or that of the future, too.
“Once again the power numbers are good,” Mackanin said. “I’m not going to knock it. But as I said earlier, consistent at-bats are what we’re looking for. So that when that guy goes to the plate you feel good about him giving you a good at-bat.
“Freddy’s right up there with our team leaders in RBIs. He’s got that kind of ability. He comes up big . ... He comes up big very often. But we want him to be more consistent; get that on-base percentage up.”
At critical times, Galvis seems quite capable of being the kind of hitter he’s expected to be, while also adding the more than occasional pop at the plate that most teams would love from a shortstop hitting out the 8-spot.
That he can’t do it more than 25 percent of the time? So be it.
He’s only 27. There’s always tomorrow’s game to see that Galvis’ streakiness is really consistent enough.