The king of home runs is no longer a horse, now he is a Bull. Juan Franciscohistorical home run leader in the history of LIDOM, reached an agreement with the Eastern Bulls, announced the general manager of the franchise, Jesús Mejía. Francisco, Rookie of the Year in the 2008-09 season, two-time Most Valuable Player and multiple times leader in home runs in RBIs in the league, arrives with his 84 home runs to La Romana where he will be wearing his third jacket, having previously worn that of the Giants and Tigers. “Juan Francisco gives us a powerful left-handed bat to use starting in the middle of the lineup or pinch-hitting for specific at-bats. He should give us a good balance by joining bats like Yamaico, Yermín and Aneury Tavarez as options in the middle of the lineup since the beginning of the season, ”said the bullfighting executive at the time of making the announcement. The Bonao native arrives at Corral with a career offensive line of .262/.344/.454 and in addition to his 84 home runs, he is fourth in history with 338 RBIs, only surpassed by Jesús Rojas Alou (339), Winston Llenas (377) and Rafael Batista (395). “By evaluating the numbers and the advanced data, we identified that he maintains elite levels, compared to the league, in terms of his average speed and his maximum speed coming out of the bat,” explained Jesús Mejía. “In turn, his percentage of walks and good swing decisions remains well above the LIDOM average. Apart from this, he is a hitter who accumulates an OPS of .872 in Francisco Micheli, the highest of all free agent hitters available this year”, added the bullfighting manager. In addition, Francisco has the highest OBP (.386) and SLG (.486) of any player available in free agency. Including the postseason, Francisco accumulates 117 home runs, the only player in history to exceed one hundred homers. Adding up all the stages, he is only surpassed in RBIs by Luis Polonia, who finished with 472 and Francisco has 449 RBIs. “He fits as a figure that brings positive leadership to our clubhouse, which represents a super valuable intangible for the plan we have. We have no doubt that he is going to be a productive player for our franchise,” Jesús Mejía ended by saying. With the arrival of Juan Francisco, the Toros add 13 players signed in free agency, who along with another five who have arrived via trade, will be replacing a total of 28 players who left the roster via free agency, retirement, trade or who they had been released.
