2009 Season in Review: Juan Francisco

Juan Francisco came into the season riding a wave of great success in the Dominican Winter League where he set the single season HR record for left handers. Here is what his 2009 season looked like combined through three levels:

Seasonal Review

Francisco got off to a very tough start in AA to begin the year. In April he posted a line of .227/.253/.432 with 3 walks and 21 strikeouts. May wasn’t much better as the lefty had a line of .258/.276/.450 with 4 walks and 28 strikeouts. Something changed in June though as Francisco rebounded well with a .310/.363/.536 line to go with much better plate discipline of 5 walks and 14 strikeouts. July wasn’t as good as June but still much better than the first two months with a .269/.320/.484 line coupled with 6 walks and 19 strikeouts. In August Francisco absolutely caught fire with a .404/.436/.712 line before earning a late season promotion to AAA Louisville where he continued his hot hitting with a .364/.371/.667 line, though between the two levels Francisco took a major step back in the plate discipline department with 4 walks and 26 strikeouts. September was short in AAA even though Louisville went to the playoffs. Francisco posted a .333/.373/.521 line including the playoffs before getting one final promotion to Cincinnati as a September call up. Francisco hit .429/.520/.619 while with the Reds over his 25 plate appearances.

Here is how Francisco’s season looked after each game in his slash stats:

As expected with a low walk rate, Francisco’s OBP and AVG are nearly on identical paths. In all three stats here Francisco dramatically improved as the season progressed.

Here are his rate stats by game:

That walk rate did improve as the season went along, but it remained well below average for the entire season. Fortunately the strikeout rate started out high and worked its way downward almost throughout the season.

Here is the spray chart for Francisco while in the minors:

As expected, Francisco uses the entire outfield incredibly equal. Given that Francisco had some pretty big splits, I looked at the spray numbers between the two sides. Rather than make a spray chart, I just compared the numbers in the table below.

Most of the numbers are similar with the lone real difference is the outfield spread where it looks like the balls hit to left field against righties are now going more toward center and less to left against left handers.