Murphy: Will the real Maikel Franco please stand up (patiently)?

Talk to most major-league assistant coaches and they'll tell you that one of the reasons they have a job is to give their employer somebody to fire when things turn south.

"You can't fire the players," a wise coach once told me as we sat in the Phillies dugout during one of these southward turns.

So we should be careful that we don't make too much of the Phillies' decision to relieve batting coach Steve Henderson of his duties after Sunday's season finale. After four seasons in which the Phillies ranked 13th, 9th, 13th and last in runs, there was plenty of reason to look toward a new voice. But it is worth at least noting that Henderson's dismissal comes after a year in which one of the lynchpins of the club's rebuilding effort took a dramatic step back at the plate.

The Phillies entered 2016 with high hopes for Maikel Franco after a rookie season in which the third baseman hit .280 with a .343 OBP, .497 slugging percentage and 14 home runs in 335 plate appearances. While few people expected him to blossom into a superstar, there was plenty of reason to think he would return to the field this season as a more mature hitter with a better understanding of how to approach major-league pitchers.

Instead, Franco spent most of the season turning in production that would make him nothing more than a power-hitting seven-hole hitter in a contending lineup. He hit 25 home runs, but posted an OBP of just .306 and slugging percentage of just .427.

This wasn't just the result of the year-to-year variance of statistics, either. Long regarded as a free swinger who would need to take a more disciplined approach to thrive in the big leagues, Franco seemed to go the opposite direction. His walk rate fell from 7.8 percent of plate appearances to 6.4 percent of plate appearances. He swung at 52 percent of all pitches he saw, up from 48 percent the year before. He swung at the first pitch in 36.6 percent of his at-bats, an increase of 10.3 points from the year before.

The good news is that even in a down year, Franco gave the Phillies league average production and 20+ home runs at a premium defensive position. Provided he stays in shape, he should remain a major-league regular for years to come.

Yet the Phillies are at a point in their process where they need some stars to emerge. They've done an impressive job of restoring the organizational depth that had withered away over the previous few years. They were competitive throughout most of the season, winning 71 games and giving fans some reason to think that a return to glory might happen sooner rather than later.

But the next step is far more difficult than the first. To make the jump from being competitive to being able to win more games than not, the Phillies need to find several players who can consistently give them above-average run production, and right now, Franco remains their best chance.

Top hitting prospect J.P. Crawford is coming off a dismal performance at triple-A, where he hit just .244/.328/.318 with 12 extra-base hits in 385 plate appearances. Outfielder Nick Williams hit .258/.287/.427 with 13 home runs in 527 plate appearances at triple-A. Catcher Jorge Alfaro had a decent year in double-A, but he struck out 105 times with 22 walks in 435 plate appearances and went 2 for 16 with eight strikeouts as a September call-up.

Hitting a baseball is not an easy thing to do, and thus it is not an easy thing to coach. But Franco needs to spend this offseason doing everything in his power to put himself in a position to be more successful at it. One of the many bits of wisdom Charlie Manuel used to dispense in his understated way concerned the difficulty of establishing oneself as a major-league regular, particularly on a team with playoff aspirations.

"It's an everyday thing," Manuel used to say, again and again.

What he meant was this: Talent can take a player only so far. In the bigs, everybody is talented. A player can't simply show up and expect to be able to continue to do things the way he's always done them if the way he's always done them involves little more than showing up a few hours before gametime and letting his natural ability shine.

There's a reason the great ones — the Roy Halladays, the Chase Utleys — always seem to possess a near-obsessive level of focus, both on and off the field. Even a hitter who works the count to its fullest can only hope to see a maximum of 10-15 hittable pitches per night. Every part of that hitter's physiology and psychology needs to be prepared to deploy his natural talent when one of those pitches arrives.

Franco is young. He rose quickly through the upper levels of the minor leagues. He doesn't have much help around him. One of the players I heard scouts compare him to when he was coming up was Aramis Ramirez, whose numbers through his first six seasons looked a lot like Franco's numbers this season: .263/.312/.441. Ramirez's peak began at age 26, and for the next 10 seasons, he hit .296/.360/.530 while averaging 26 home runs per year.

Those kinds of numbers would make Franco a legitimate lineup centerpiece.

Another player I heard comparisons to was Edwin Encarnacion. From age 22 to 28, the third baseman hit .260/.336/.453 while averaging 17 home runs per year. Again, solid numbers, but ones more appropriate for the six- or seven-hole on a contending club. In the five seasons since, he's hit .272/.367/.544 while averaging 39 home runs.

Franco will be 24 next season. If he eventually gives the Phillies 5-10 seasons of Ramirez or Encarnacion production, it will be worth however long the wait. But both Encarnacion and Ramirez spent their early years with small-market clubs whose resources paled to the ones the Phillies have. This fan base is not the kind that will be content with a rebuilding process that does not come to fruition until 2019 or 2020. Even the Pirates and Reds ended up trading Ramirez and Encarnacion before their breakouts occurred.

There will be a lot of talk in the coming months about the Phillies' need to add some offense to a pitching staff that, for the most part, took a solid step forward this season. That is not an untrue characterization. But their greatest hope for significant progress starts at third base. Learning how to hit big-league pitching takes time. Franco needs to be doing everything he can to make the most of his.