Cal Baseball: Mark Canha's Success at Leadoff Helps Trigger the A's 13-Game Win Streak

Cal grad Marcus Semien was the Oakland A’s primary leadoff hitter the past couple seasons. When Semien signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in the offseason, manager Bob Melvin found another former Golden Bear to pencil in atop his lineup card.

Melvin — also a Cal man — went to 32-year-old Mark Canha, and the move is paying off.

The A’s entered Sunday’s game at Baltimore with an American League-best 14-7 record and riding a 13-game win streak. That’s the longest win streak by any team in the majors since 2017, and one short of equaling the second-best stretch in Oakland history.

Canha, who has mostly batted cleanup or fifth in the lineup in recent years, has thrived as the leadoff man.

During the 13-game win streak, Oakland’s left fielder is batting .302 with a .464 on-base percentage. He leads the American League in runs scored (23) and is fifth in walks (14).

In Oakland’s 7-2 win over the Orioles on Saturday, Canha reached base three times in five plate appearances, with a single, double and hit by a pitch. He scored three runs and drove in a pair.

“What Mark has done in the leadoff spot is hard to do,” Melvin said. “For a guy used to hitting down in the lineup and middle of the order. We don’t want him to do anything different, just take the at-bats like he normally does.”

Canha has played in 12 of the 13 games during the win streak, scoring a run in 10 of those 12 outings, and crossing the plate multiple times in five of them. He has reached base in 10 games during the club's win streak.

For the season so far, Canha has a .424 OBP, .274 average and .890 OPS.

Pretty good for a guy who’d hit in the leadoff spot just once in his previous six seasons with the A’s.

Canha explained during spring training how he was adjusting to the new role.

“There is something about hitting in a certain place in the lineup, particularly the leadoff spot, that it just feels different,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle late last month. “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’s walks are a function of his improved discipline at the plate. He said he doesn’t step into the batter’s box looking for a walk, but he is selective, as evidenced by the rate of pitches he chased out of the strike zone last season (19.3 percent), far better than the major league average (27.2 percent).

“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.”

Canha said he tried to take that approach when he was a younger player, but often would become “reactionary.”

“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,” he said. “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 and the A’s are seeing exactly the results they want right now.

Cover photo of Mark Canha by Tommy Gilligan, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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