How special might this Phillies lineup be? Let’s count the ways ... | David Murphy

Let’s start with Pedro Feliz.

A few years ago, a few of us were talking about Maikel Franco, and the conversation revolved mostly around his ceiling. This was 2016, and the kid was 23 years old, coming off a half of a season of baseball in which he’d hit 14 home runs with a .497 slugging percentage while reaching base at a .343 clip. Truth be told, this was a better start to his career than some people expected. Not a lot of people. But, while a minority, it was one that counted among it some seasoned eyes: scouts and prospect-rankers and front office folks who’d seen more than enough baseball to have some capital behind their opinions.

Franco had been a name for several years. One of the earliest scouts I’d polled had mentioned Edwin Encarnacion. At the time, it was a favorable comp. Then with the Blue Jays, Encarnacion was at the time establishing himself as one of the game’s most fearsome corner infielders, in the midst of a six-season stretch that would see him average 38 dingers per season with a .907 OPS. But it had taken awhile for the breakthrough to occur. At the age of 28, Encarnacion was averaging 17 homers per season with a barely-above-average batting line of .260/.336/.453.

I remember thinking, at the time, about Pedro Feliz. The Phillies had won a World Series with a third baseman who’d signed with the club after a five-year run with the Giants in which he’d hit 20 home runs per season, albeit with little else besides power to go with his glove. Maybe Franco would never reach the heights of post-breakout Encarnacion. But, at the very least, there was reason to think that he could be another Feliz. And that, if everything else went according to plan, there was reason to think that was all the Phillies would need.

Fast forward to Monday, the day after the end of the first series of the season. Franco had entered the season hitting .252/.303/.435 with 85 home runs over the equivalent of 3½ big-league seasons. For three of those years, that had felt like far less than enough, and when Gabe Kapler stuck him in the eight-hole on opening day, it warranted little more than a shrug.

And then some funny things happened. Franco hit a home run in Game 1, and then another in Game 2, and by the end of Game 3 he’d reached base in seven of his 12 plate appearances. But the funniest thing is the fact that, even now, with the Phillies at 3-0, the performance of the Phillies’ new eight-hole hitter is mostly an afterthought.

Maikel Franco is 26 years old, three years younger than Encarnacion was in his first breakout season. A betting man would tell you that there’s a pretty good chance that he won’t reach September with a 1.694 OPS. But he would also tell you that there is something to be said for the fact that you haven’t heard a peep from the general population about moving him up in the lineup.

Within the arc of baseball’s calendar year, April is a month that demands full disclosure. The Phillies will not go 162-0, nor will the Braves go 0-162. Andrew McCutchen, Rhys Hoskins, Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto -- the new heart of the order will not be nearly as productive as they were in the first three games of the season. But they are good. Damn, good. And there is absolutely no reason to assume that, as a whole, this lineup will produce all that much less than the best of the lineups that we saw in the Phillies’ 2008-11 era.

My favorite stat from the series sweep of the Braves: Of the 51 plate appearances taken by the three aforementioned newcomers plus Hoskins, 20 resulted in either a walk or a home run. That’s a mind-boggling ratio, but it is one that has all 10 of the fingerprints of the young general manager. Matt Klentak has taken a considerable bit of lip from some the local baseball establishment’s more — how shall we put this — established members, fans and media alike. I suspect that if you drew a Venn Diagram representing the congruence between these people and those who spent four years screaming bloody murder at Sam Hinkie, you would only need one circle.

Now, I’m not going to waste too much time fighting another battle in a war that has already been decided for close to a decade now, but one look at McCutchen’s batting line in that Braves series should offer a compelling argument in favor of the type of team that the Phillies have been trying to build for the last several years. Regardless of age or wealth or color or creed, all of us should agree that the Phillies’ new leadoff hitter did a heck of a job. Two home runs, three walks, four runs scored. And a batting average of, let’s see, exactly .182.

“The beauty of our lineup is that we have so many tough outs, if a couple of guys have a down night, there are five or six guys who can pick those guys up,” Jake Arrieta said after the Phillies finished off the sweep on Sunday night. “There’s no weak spots in our lineup. . .It’s just amazing to see that.”

This is the lineup that Klentak has been trying to build. Carlos Santana was a casualty, but he did not die in vain. This is a game where the positive true outcomes are walks and extra base hits. At the very least, the Phillies are going to generate those things in bunches. Barring injury, it should continue to be a heck of a thing to watch.

Oh, and a 26-year-old Franco batting eighth?

Yeah, they’ll take that.