Allen aims to hit his way to everyday role
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Nick Allen is a superb defensive shortstop who reached the majors last season and he’s a homegrown 24-year-old on a rebuilding Oakland Athletics team. After a rookie year that left open questions about his hitting, Allen is hitting .375 in Cactus League play this spring. An optimist might cite that as progress.
Yet the A’s have refrained from declaring Allen their primary shortstop going into the season. Manager Mark Kotsay was asked Sunday morning what is preventing them from doing so.
“I think you look at the production offensively last year,” Kotsay said. “We evaluate that, his adjustments and growth, our offense last year as a group. We didn’t score enough runs. We look to … get the best lineup on the field as well as the best defense, that combination. And that’s what we’re doing right now, evaluating both sides.”
Allen hit just .207/.256/.291 last season, worth a 60 OPS+ (100 is MLB average) in 100 games. He’s sharing time at shortstop this spring with Aledmys Díaz, a 32-year-old utilityman signed as a free agent this offseason.
Díaz isn’t the defender Allen is, but had a 95 OPS+ in 92 games for the Astros last year, and shortstop hasn’t been Díaz’s primary position since 2018. Kotsay reiterated Sunday that the A’s nevertheless see him as an option there, among other spots.
One possible factor? Both players’ platoon splits. Between Triple-A and the majors last year, Allen hit .302 against lefties and .198 against right-handers. Between Double- and Triple-A in 2021, he hit .385 against lefties and .260 against righties.
Díaz has better career numbers against right-handers (.275 average, .779 OPS) than lefties (.245, .722), so the A’s might want him in their lineup against righties anyway, and would need to find a place. They have lefthanded-hitting options at other positions Díaz has played — third base (Jace Peterson), second (Tony Kemp) and left field (Seth Brown).
That doesn’t mean the A’s intend to platoon at shortstop, but they’re keeping their lineup options open. Kotsay said Díaz could see starts at DH and Allen also played some second base last year.
“There’s a ton of combinations that we can put together and feel good about,” Kotsay said. “Nothing is set in stone. And even when we open the season, with the Opening Day lineup, things can change. You saw that last year. We used a lot of different combinations.”
Given Allen’s value on defense, he could draw more starting assignments with more offense. He worked in the offseason with both A’s hitting coach Tommy Everidge and a personal coach on “trying to keep my front hip in” and stabilize his plant leg during his swing. He was “flying open” last season and it showed on the pitches that gave him trouble.
“I was good on a lot of heaters in, and sliders away were I guess trickier,” Allen said. “All the evidence pointed to my front-hip leak; a lot of numbers correlated to that.”
Against big-league right-handers, Allen hit .300 against fastballs and .078 against breaking pitches last season. He welcomes even minor signs of progress. On Saturday, Allen rolled a grounder to the third baseman on a fifth-inning slider from a righty. Afterward he said “maybe wasn’t the greatest pitch to swing at” but he “felt the feeling I want.”
“I didn’t really feel that at all last year, where my hands would stay back and it just felt like a smooth rhythm into the baseball on a righty slider,” Allen said. “I know I have that, and it was good having it come back. Hopefully that’ll turn into some good results.”
Two innings earlier, Allen drove a fastball from a left-hander into the gap in right-center for a triple. It conveyed possibility and the glove-only rep that Allen hopes to overcome.
“It’s no secret that coming through the minor leagues, the defense was ahead and the defense plays at the major-league level,” general manager David Forst said of Allen in early March. “It’s taken him a little while to get going at every level. But we saw improvement in him the second time he was up (in 2022) compared to the first time in terms of his ability to catch up to the speed of the game.”