In 2008, Ryan Franklin picked up a handful of saves for the Cardinals. Even though he didn’t strike out many batters (just 5.8 K/9), didn’t have elite control (3.4 BB/9), and only topped out in the low 90s with his fastball, St. Louis installed him as the team’s primary closer. In 2009 Franklin rewarded them with 38 saves and a 1.92 ERA. He even made the All-Star team. The Cardinals rewarded Franklin with a two-year, $6.5 M contract despite some warning signs. You know, the low strike-out rate (even though it went up all the way to 6.5 K/9!), non-elite control (3.5 BB/9), and the mediocre stuff.
2010 was pretty good – 27 saves and a 3.46 ERA – as Franklin cut his walk rate more than in half to 1.4 BB/9. Certainly reasonable production given he was only being paid like a solid middle reliever. Going into 2011, St. Louis only needed one more decent season from Franklin before handing the ball off to some young flame-thrower. That… didn’t quite work out.
The Cardinals released Franklin this week. He was 1-4 on the season (record-wise), and also 1-4 as saves-blown saves go. His ERA was 8.46. That’s ugly stuff. The amusing part is that Franklin isn’t pitching all that much worse than in years past. Strike-outs are down more, but not a ton (5.5 K/9). Control is still OK (2.3 BB/9). Fastball’s still coming in around 91 mph. It just looked like suddenly batters started crushing the ball. Franklin was giving up line-drives left and right, and when batters actually elevated the ball a little more it would find the seats with great regularity (almost 3 HR/9). Apparently the Cardinals didn’t think it was some temporary bad luck (based on his K’s, walks, and flyball rate, you’d expect him to be pitching only marginally worse than he did in ’08 and ’09), and so cut him. And given the close-ness of the NL Central race, I don’t really blame them.
It’s not exactly a new story here. Relievers, by dint of only throwing maybe 60-70 innings a season, are capable of running of 3-4 solid seasons, while, you know, not actually being all that good. And when things turn south, the low number of innings means a bad start is really hard to dig out of. The Cardinals should be pretty happy that they were able to get 4+ pretty good seasons out of Franklin for relatively little investment.
