Ty France is back, but is the best still yet to come?

Vive la révolution, vive Driveline, vive Ty France

A lot of disappointment came out of 2023 for the Seattle Mariners. Largest among them, missing the playoffs. Not quite looming as Mt. Rainier, but still signifcant in stature, was the performance of Ty France. You can’t outright say that France was bad last year, in fact, if you look at his year to year stat lines, one thing France has been is consistent, and this held true for many areas of his game. The cause for hand-wringing lay mostly in the few areas that regressed, both because of how that affected his value last year, as well as possibly foreshadowing the ever looming decline all ballplayers must face at some point.

But France was a valuable player last year, just not the level of value the Mariners needed him to be as part of the core of their offense. He finished the season with a 104 wRC+ and a 1.1 fWAR. These numbers are fine for a bottom third of the lineup player, but that’s not what the Mariners needed, or expected. In 2022 he had posted a 125 wRC+ and 2.5 fWAR, and in 2021 a 129 wRC+ and 3.2 fWAR.

I won’t spend too much time relitigating France’s previous work, or the work he did in the off-season to come back improved, you can read about that in more detail in his 40 in 40 season preview profile. The short version is that in an answer to those causes for concern, all of that ugly blue particularly in quality of contact, is that he spent the off-season at Driveline attempting to improve his mechanics and conditioning. At only 75 plate appearances, we’re still far too early to be drawing any concrete conclusions, but what are the numbers telling us so far?

In terms of overall run value, not good! Or, league average at best. Fielding and baserunning have never been France’s strong suit, although shout out to Ty for making some amazing scoops already this season, the one area of his defense that has almost always shined. His value ideally comes from the bat, and in terms of Run Value that bat has been right around league average. Only, that represents the overall results, but not necessarily the performance.

The rest of his Baseball Savant sliders tell a much better tale, and potentially a more predictive one. To put it simply, he has been making not only quality contact, in almost every category he’s in the upper tiers of the league. His Barrel Rate is only slightly above league average, but it is currently the second highest rate of any previous season numbers of his, at 7.5% or 5.3 Barrel/PA. He is actualy striking out more than his previous three seasons, but at a still very acceptable 20%, and his walk rate of 9.3% is better than any season numbers he’s posted, period. Ty France is walking to first base, the real way, and astonishly has yet to be hit by a pitch. The ability to wear one is certainly a skill, but it has long been speculated that some of France’s streakiness at the plate could be tied to some of the uglier times he’s been hit on the elbow/hand/wrist. Perhaps we are seeing a Ty France that is more confident in his mechanics, wiser about the risk? After all, he wouldn’t want to sacrifice in all those other areas.

The contact quality is that much more improved. In his 2023 numbers, his 87.5 mph average exit velocity was about in line with what he had been posting in previous seasons, and was in the bottom twenty percent of the league. This year so far his average exit velocity has made a nearly four point jump to 91.1 mph, and the difference is enought to catapult him nearly into the top 20% (just outside in the top 21%, surely we can round up).

Even though this improved quality has ultimately amounted to mostly league average results, with him posting a .269/.328 BA and SLG, the expected numbers give us reason to believe those results may improve, especially with an xBA of .301 at a more than thirty point jump and a whopping one hundred and sixty point jump in his expected slugging at .488. Maybe weighted stats are your thing. His wOBA is sitting below the league average of .316, with him posting a .303 so far in that category, but his xwOBA is also healthily above his actual numbers at .366. If we isolate the weighted and expected numbers for contact, or xwoBACON (which I like to pronounce ex-whoa-buh-con, and not like the meat product), he’s sitting at a monstrous .425, with the league average at the time of this writing being .368.

Ty has always been pretty good at not swinging through pitches, his chase rate last year was one of the biggest difference makers in the quality of those results. This year he is firmly in the red, in the top thirty percent of the league. This speaks to France’s ability to stick to the game plan this year, a salve the Mariners desperately needed after nearly the entire squad abandoned that ideal in 2023.

In the above image we can see his rolling xwOBA over the last one hundred plate appearances, with the data points being the start of the season, and his last time to the plate in Saturday’s game. Again, France is sticking to the process, and whatever the results, the underlying data shows he is performing with the best in the league, and among the unluckiest so far of the everyday players. His .160 point gulf between his SLG actual and xSLG is the ninth largest such difference in the league among players with at least fifty plate appearances. The .063 difference between his wOBA and xWOBA would rank as the 24th with the same qualifications, and out of 218 qualified players.

It would be unfair to not include his rolling xwOBA from Sunday, in which France suffered a downward spike, but that spike was only one day of baseball (two games thanks to the double header), and only fell as far as around league average. Again, these are all small data sets, and we should stray from taking too much value from any given individual point, but even with his 1-for-9 day at the plate we can look brightly on the one hit being a double, and in neither game did he strike out.

One month of baseball ultimately matters very little in the scope of a player’s full season. Ty France still has a long way to go to show that he can not only be an everyday player in this lineup, but a key driving (Drivelining?) source to their success. Still, it is never too early to appreciate a player who has put in the hard work and is already seeing the results from that work. And if, just if, the underlying numbers are to be believed, it will only get better from here. Vive 2024 Ty France.