After an encouraging month of April in which Maikel Franco slashed .278/.304/.500, there was some hope that the much maligned 25-year-old third baseman was perhaps rediscovering the form that once made him an exciting young player during his 2015 rookie season. That hope faded after a mediocre month of May and what has been a miserable June that began with J.P. Crawford replacing him as the team’s every day third baseman. Crawford, of course, is now on the disabled list with a broken left hand, thus giving Franco one last chance to prove he belongs.

I’m not particularly bullish on that happening, and neither is Jim Bowden who had a rather harsh assessment of Franco this morning on Sirius XM’s Power Alley:

He’s gotta either step it up, or they’re going to move on. Certainly, when you look at his on-base percentage at 28 percent, exactly what he did a year ago. He’s hitting .240, .230 last year. He’s hitting for power, he’s going to hit his 24, 25 [home runs] again, but that’s not good enough anymore.

As such, Bowden believes the Phillies are primed to add a third baseman before July’s trade deadline:

They’ve been in on Machado, they’ve had a conversation on Moustakas. They’ve had a conversation on Donaldson, and they’ve had a conversation on Beltre. And when it comes to third baseman, the inventory is so big that you can’t move them all because most contending teams have third base solved.

When asked if Franco was someone that he would want to acquire, Bowden was direct, saying, “No, I’m done. I’m over him, too.”

You can listen to his full thoughts on Franco after the jump: