A’s Mark Canha preparing for potential leadoff role
MESA, Ariz. — The matter of who will open the season as the A's primary leadoff hitter might be all but resolved. Tuesday found Mark Canha in the leadoff spot for a fourth straight game, and the seventh in a row in which he has played.
Canha fits the role, given that manager Bob Melvin deems getting on base as the top qualification and Canha led the A's in on-base percentage the past two years. He has started only one major-league game atop the A's lineup, so it isn't familiar ground for the 32-year-old outfielder.
“There is something about hitting in a certain place in the lineup, particularly the leadoff spot, that it just feels different,” Canha said Tuesday. “But mentally, it's not like I treat the at-bats any different or have a different approach or anything. I figure they want me there because they like the way I go about my at-bats and I should just keep doing what I'm doing.”
Canha hit mostly cleanup or fifth the past two seasons. But in some ways, he carried a leadoff profile: He saw the sixth-most pitches (4.39) per plate appearance among qualified hitters last season and ranked in the top 10% in walk rate each of the past two years. He doesn't steal a lot of bases but wasn't thrown out in four attempts in 2020.
The walk totals are the product of a selective approach, Canha said. But they aren't necessarily the goal. The rate of pitches Canha chases out of the strike zone has declined steadily over his career and was 19.3% last season, well below the MLB average of 27.4%. He said people ask “all the time” if he goes to the plate trying to walk, “and the answer to that is no.”
“I ask myself a lot of times before an at-bat, what pitch do you want to hit?” Canha said. “Whether it's a zone or a location or a pitch type, I'm looking for something and I'm very specific and I'm not swinging if I don't get what I want.
“I think a lot of times when I was younger, I'd say things like that to myself but then I'd be very reactionary in the box . ... I've learned over the course of my career that it's OK to give up strike one and strike two by letting the ball go by. It happens. And I think once I got out of that stigma of being afraid of striking out looking and afraid to take pitches, I started seeing more results.”
Canha said he has made a point this spring of being ready to swing at the first pitch of an at-bat, or a game, if it's “a good one.” He did that just 19.3% of the time last season, least often among qualified A's hitters. He's a career .355 hitter, though, putting the first pitch of an at-bat in play.
Canha 7 5-for-30 in Cactus League play with no extra-base hits (he'd drawn eight walks in 39 slate appearances). Spring numbers are typically dismissed for older players and Melvin said he doesn't think it's related to the leadoff trial. Melvin said he plans to talk soon with Canha “about how he feels, but he hasn't said anything to me that would suggest he's uncomfortable with it.”
Oakland proffered power in the leadoff spot with Marcus Semien, who hit 31 home runs there in 2019. Canha hit 26 homers that year, though just five in the abbreviated 2020 season. Canha is among hitters who value in-game video use to make adjustments between at-bats and noted the lack of it last season was a “bummer.” Video will be allowed again in dugouts this season on tablets after replay rooms were closed in 2020 under MLB'S health and safety protocols.
The feedback offered by ingame video arrives only after a hitter's first at-bat. Canha suggested being atop the lineup benefits that first trip. His theory might be tested often this season.