What Denzel Clarke is Showing Us Right Now Should Have A's Fans Paying Attention
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On the one hand, the A's are 1-5 after six games this season, but it's way too early to panic. On the other, centerfielder Denzel Clarke is showing us some real advancement in his metrics that we shouldn't ignore, either.
On the season, Denzel Clarke has gone 2-for-14 (.143) with a pair of singles. He's also scored a run, driven in a run, and struck out seven times, putting him at a 46.67% strikeout rate early in the year. On the surface those are not ideal numbers. Heck, even his expected batting average (xBA) is only slightly higher than the real deal at .160.
But one thing has stood out from his game the past two days, and it's that he has led both the A's and Atlanta Braves in the hardest hit ball of the game each day. Yesterday it was a slider hit 108.7 miles per hour off of Chris Sale, and on Tuesday it was a changeup he drilled at 111.8 mph.
Both of those balls were hit harder than either of the home runs that Shea Langeliers hit in the series. So why didn't we hear about how far these balls travelled? Well, they were driven directly into the ground.
That's the downside at the moment, but this seems to be something that he and the A's hitting coaches can look to fix over the next few weeks in order to turn those groundouts into doubles in the gap, or even home runs over the fence.
Big gains over last season
The fact that he's hitting the ball so hard means that his timing is looking pretty good on these pitches, but his swing plane needs to be figured out at the point of contact. That's the issue that he'll be working on.
What's exciting about the early returns right now is that Clarke has some tremendously high bat speed working for him this season. His ball on Wednesday had a bat speed of 81 mph, with the league average this season being 71.8 mph. Clarke's average bat speed this season is 79.7 mph, which is the highest in all of baseball one week into the season.
Last season Clarke ranked fourth on his own team with a 74.3 mph bat speed. Now, this may have always been in his back pocket the whole time, as he was only recording a "fast swing" (75 mph or higher) 43.1% of the time last year. This year that's up to 96.2%, so essentially every swing he's taken has been faster than his average from last year.
Some players, like Jacob Wilson, Darell Hernaiz, Jeff McNeil and Andy Ibáñez, swing slower in order to have better contact skills, but they give up a little bit in the power department. Clarke is selling out for speed, and when he makes contact, he's hiting it extremely hard.
The big question moving forward is whether he can make enough contact at the right launch angle for this approach to be effective.
One comp that the A's would likely take
The one player that typically lives at the top of the bat speed leaderboards is Oneil Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates. While he may not be the best defensive centerfielder in the world, he can connect with some balls and send them into orbit, belting at least 20 home runs in each of the past two seasons. He's also struck out over 30% of the time in each of those seasons.
Given Clarke's otherworldly defensive ability, if they could push him to being a 20 home run threat like Cruz, he could quickly become one of the best all-around players in baseball.
What makes this seem achieveable is that Cruz's average launch angle isn't terribly high either, sitting at 9.8 degrees in 2024 and 8.1 degrees a year ago. Last year, Clarke was at 4.1, so if he can add just a little bit of lift to his swing in the coming weeks, we could be witness to a surprise breakout from the A's defensive wizard.
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Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.
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