The lineup of the Oakland A is stacked, with star potential at virtually every position. What’s more, they’re recently started living after some early rest, averaging six runs per piece over their last five games.
Matt Olson saves things. Mark Canha arrives at base and rides in runes. Matt Chapman, Robbie Grossman, Stephen Piscotty, and Austin Allen have all blown clutch-homers since Tuesday to ban or win games, and Marcus Semien has just notched a walk-off hit. Ramon Laureano seems to be the hero every other day, and Khris Davis finally shows signs of breaking his long funk.
But none of them can quite match the current hottest hitter on the team: No. 9 batter Tony Kemp.
In the last week, in his peloton with Chad Pinder on second base, Kemp has been on the plate 18 times and reached base in 11 of these trips. Those are six hits and five walks, and one of the outs was a sac-bunt. His line in that span works out to .500 / .647 / .500, for a wRC + of 247. That is more than 70 points higher than the lead Davis (176), Piscotty (175), and Laureano (171).
Kemp (August): 6-for-12, 5 BB, 2 Ks, 247 wRC +
Sure, all of Kemp’s hits have been singles, while his teammates have found many extra bases. But anyone who has seen the marathon on Friday can appreciate the occasional need for a simple single to ride in a major run, and that’s what the A’s lineup has struggled with over the last few years. A slack hitter who is good at making contact is a worthy addition to the mix as anyone else is envious of hitting out with rounds in scoring position.
What’s more, although Kemp will not always land these many hits, the ones he’s gotten so far are solid instead of total happiness. All six of them carried Statcast’s expected batting average of at least .500, with a few in the .600s and a few more in the .900s. Even the ones that were hit softly were still the kinds of bloops that fall in almost every time, and a few of his outs were also light robberies. Add it all up and his recent xwOBA is around .500, and his mark for the season is over .400, even though he has hit nothing faster than 96.2 mph downhill speed.
Moreover, he has almost as many walks. Again, zero power is involved, but he has only come out unintentionally six times in his last 18 trips. Why do I like him?
For the last few years, Kemp has been the pesky no. 9 hitter in the Astros lineup. It seemed like every time he annoyingly went for a walk or pulled a single sign, or led an inning to set up for the top of the sequence, or to expand a rally so the star hitters could come up and take a chance to get. Now the 28-year-old is doing it in front of the A’s instead of against them.
It’s endlessly frustrating to tackle a stacked lineup and the no. 9-hitter not to be removed. It’s also valuable, as we saw on Friday – his walk in the 13th keeps things alive for Semien to come up and win it. Sure, it would have been cool to just watch the hot Kemp do it himself, but instead he made at least no outcome.
Of course, this all comes down to a small sample, which is why we use the word “very” and not “the best.” We all know he will not raise .500 forever, or keep an OBP from this absurdity. But he does it right now, and the short season requires a greater appreciation of these hot regions. The nature of small samples has not changed in terms of their (lack of) long-term statistical significance, but there is this year no long-term, which means that these small warms will have much more impact than normal, despite their durability.
Kemp also contributes to the other side of the ball, including this impressive Friday game:
While nobles like that are excellent, the one I found to appreciate the most came in the bottom of the 12th. With two up and two out, the scorer sent a routine grounder to Kemp, and he clapped it to Marcus Semien for the power to end the inning. Nothing to it, right? Except we saw the A’s lose multiple games on similar base flips and throws last year, when former second baseman Jurickson Profar had the yips. Praising a big leaguer for reliably making routine plays looks like a blank bar until you see what it’s like not to make it clear.
Second base is the one position in Oakland, none of which really expected anything to go into the season. Most of the other spots were filled with rising stars rather than otherwise exciting names, but second base was an open competition between a few inconsistent youngsters, a Rule 5 draft pick, and Kemp, a career handyman gained in a small business.
Somehow, at least for now, that point has yielded a stint of major production of 2B a few weeks into the season. The A’s have the sure hand they needed on defense at the keystone, and now he’s giving them some bonus offensive out of position as well, though it could take a long time. Tony Kemp is currently the hottest hitter on the team, just as no one expected.
