{"id":90991,"date":"2025-02-11T15:46:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T20:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=90991"},"modified":"2025-02-11T15:46:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T20:46:01","slug":"twins-sign-ty-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/11\/twins-sign-ty-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins Buys Low on Former All-Star First Baseman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A report from <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MillerStrib\/status\/1889408657680633987\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune<\/a> indicates the Minnesota Twins will sign veteran Ty France to a one-year deal. France, 30, was an All-Star with the Seattle Mariners in 2022 but since seen his production fall rapidly. The move addresses one of Minnesota&#8217;s glaring holes, which was a player like France who can play at first base. France will likely compete with incumbent options Jose Mirana and Edouard Julien.<\/p>\n<h2>Twins Sign Ty France<\/h2>\n<p>France was once an important member of an <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/12\/11\/jerry-dipoto-trades-seattle\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">uprising Mariners club<\/a>. In his two full seasons with the Mariners (2021-2022), France hit .283\/.353\/.440 (127 OPS+) with 38 homers and 59 doubles.<\/p>\n<p>An All-Star in 2022, France excelled at not striking out and at making contact. He also benefited from getting hit by a lot of pitches, including a league-leading 27 in 2021 and 34 in 2023. Despite his success, poor underlying metrics projected an inevitable decline.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;It&#39;s painful, but I don&#39;t walk that much, so it helps in that category.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>HBP leader Ty France says it&#39;s been a regular thing for him since college \ud83d\ude05<a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/e6LF4x3Qiq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/e6LF4x3Qiq<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/oOERYR2J9h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/oOERYR2J9h<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FoulTerritoryTV\/status\/1671654235245780993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 21, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Throughout his career, France displayed poor quality of contact and low walk rates. He didn&#8217;t hit the ball hard or control the strike zone, thus making his success tough to sustain. Sure enough, his production dropped off in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Though his overall production was roughly league-average .250\/.337\/.366 (101 OPS+), it marked a big difference from what he previously produced. Plus, it only looked worse when considering his underlying metrics continued to be poor.<\/p>\n<p>Seattle kept him around for 2024, but designated him for assignment after his struggles worsened. In 340 plate appearances with the Mariners last year, France hit .223\/.312\/.350 (97 OPS+) with a non-typical 24.4 percent strikeout rate.<\/p>\n<p>His strikeout rate returned to normal (for him) after the Cincinnati Reds acquired him. However, his overall production declined even further. In 53 games, he hit .251\/.292\/.391 (85 OPS+) with five homers and ten doubles in a hitter-friendly home ballpark.<\/p>\n<p>On top of the poor offense, France does not grade out well defensively. Over the past two seasons, he has accumulated -14 Defensive Runs Saved and -13 Outs Above Average.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, France entered the free agent market hoping to offer value through potential defensive versatility with a chance to rebound offensively. It looks like Twins will sign France and provide him with that opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Katie Stratman-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A report from Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune indicates the Minnesota Twins will sign veteran Ty France to a one-year deal. France, 30, was an All-Star with the Seattle Mariners in 2022 but since seen his production fall rapidly. The move addresses one of Minnesota&#8217;s glaring holes, which was a player like France who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4683,"featured_media":95447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1071,35],"tags":[5099],"class_list":["post-90991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-twins","category-mlb","category-news","tag-ty-france"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95448,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90991\/revisions\/95448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}