Wander Franco is making the Tampa Bay Rays regret they ever doubted him in a blistering performance after his two-game benching.
No more timeouts for Wander Franco — he's a big boy, now. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger was benched for back-to-back games against the Kansas City Royals but re-entered the lineup as the second batter on Saturday.
In the third game of the series against Kansas City, Franco recorded a homer in his first at-bat, sending a clear message to his coaches: Don't bench me.
Franco got tied up in some controversy earlier this week when he was left out of the lineup for the Rays' opener against the Royals on Thursday as well as the team's game on Friday.
Various news outlets reported his absence to be due to disciplinary concerns, specifically Franco's handling of frustrating situations.
Whatever the Rays' concerns were, Franco may have won back his coaches' favor with a solid offensive showing on Saturday.
At the time of this writing, the Royals are up 8-4 in the bottom of the seventh.
Wander Franco reminds Rays why he should be in the starting lineup
Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash declined to say anything specific about Franco's mini-timeout, though the proof may be in the shortstop's recent on-field actions. In previous games, Franco has failed to run out ground balls, shattered his bat in frustration, and engaged in heated arguments with teammates in the dugout.
On Thursday, the first day of Franco's "suspension," Cash told reporters that Franco was a "really good kid, really good person… learning and dealing with the challenges of being a Major League player."
The insinuation there might be that Franco was just not mature enough to be playing at the MLB level, yet Franco's batting prowess may make him too valuable to bench.
The third-year shortstop entered Saturday's game hitting .287 and has eight homers and 34 RBIs so far this season. At just 22 years old, Franco has yet to play his best baseball, and if the Rays want to bench him in the future, it's going to be their loss.
