Can Zack Gelof Return To His 2023 Form?
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Pitchers and catchers return to camp this Wednesday, and Spring Training games start by the end of the month, which sounds truly crazy to say- but exciting nonetheless.
Heading into camp for the Athletics, the assumed starting second baseman is 25-year-old Zack Gelof. When the club elected to promote Gelof to the big leagues at the halfway point in 2023, he got off to a super hot start.
He was quickly moving up in the A's lineups, and was arguably the team's second-best hitter in the second half of 2023. He finished his impressive rookie season with exactly 300 plate appearances, where he posted a .267 batting average, and a stellar .840 OPS with 35 extra-base hits, 14 of them being home runs.
The hot start to his young career had baseball fans believing the A's were developing a future superstar. Heading into the 2024 season, the A's obviously gave Gelof the nod to be the everyday second baseman.
It wasn't long until the A's started dropping Gelof down in the lineup due to his poor hitting. Among his problems at the plate was his strikeout issue. Even in his impressive 2023 season, he still struck out over 27% of the time, which is not good at all. In 2024, he was even worse--striking out in nearly 35% of his plate appearances. Notably, Gelof led the American League in strikeouts last season.
A big part of his strikeout problem is his poor Whiff percentages. He was in the second percentile in all of baseball in Whiff percentage, meaning he struggled with swings and misses. He was very poor at his pitch selection in 2024 as well.
The main factor of whether or not Zack Gelof can play as well as he did in his rookie year is if he can limit his strikeouts and start making more contact. If he can focus less on hitting for power, and get on base more, he'd also be able to use his 86th percentile speed on the base paths.
Zack Gelof has shown he can be a problem for opposing teams at the big league level--there's no doubt about it. If the A's coaching staff can work with Gelof to fix his strikeout issue, he will certainly have a chance at being an impact player for the win-hungry A's team this upcoming season.
I grew up playing baseball, and also enjoyed watching and writing about my favorite team, the A’s. Being a diehard A’s fan from New Jersey is certainly not common, but I love the team and all of the current and former players so much. I currently attend school at Penn State Scranton where I get the opportunity to play college baseball.
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