In 301 plate appearances since coming to the Minnesota Twins, Kody Clemens is batting .211/.281/.426. That’s better than his career numbers, believe it or not, but it’s far shy of the standard for first basemen in the major leagues. Clemens has spent some time at second base and in left field, but he’s essentiall a first baseman, so he’d need to hit much better than that to provide real on-field value—at least in a role as large as the one he’s played this year.
Dig a bit deeper, though, and the news gets a bit better. For instance, Baseball Prospectus offers a metric called DRC+. It’s akin to wRC+ or OPS+, in that it attempts to describe holistic offensive contributions and uses a scale wherein 100 is average and higher is better. The difference is that it estimates expected contribution—which means correcting not just for park and league factors, but for some elements of batted-ball luck and swing decisions, and for the plate appearance-by-plate appearance level of competition faced. Clemens’s DRC+ this year is 106, which indicates that his process at the plate has been much better than the outcomes imply.
What, specifically, does that look like? Consider: Clemens is swinging at the first pitch 28.7% of the time this year, up from roughly 18% in each of the previous two seasons. He’s going to the plate ready to tee off, and it’s working gorgeously. He’s batting .385/.407/.808 on the first pitch, and .410/.410/.949 in 0-1 counts. Being more aggressive is how he’s gotten to much more power this year than in the past—even though the change is more about taking what pitchers give him than about a conscious shift into a different mode.
“It’s what you’re seeing, honestly. I mean, be aggressive early in the count,” Clemens said. “If he leaves one over the plate that you’re looking for, it’s a great time to swing. It depends, situationally, what your plan of attack is. If our starter is out there for a longer inning and you’re up trying to have a longer at-bat because he was out there for a while, it switches up, but if you get your pitch early in the count, it’s obviously great to go and get the barrel out there.”
That kind of mindset—ready to hit as soon as he gets a pitch he likes, but equally willing to work the count, not only for its own sake but to protect his teammates when needed—is why Joe Ryan called Clemens “one of the best teammates we’ve ever had in [the Twins clubhouse],” a sentiment echoed by several others in the room over the months since he arrived. He’s been a team-first guy since arriving, which doesn’t automatically make him a better hitter but does help foster the right culture in the dugout and on the field.
It’s also smart to be flexible. Clemens might sometimes be shielding his pitchers from having to go back to the mound mere moments after a long inning, but he’s also tapped into the value of a bifurcated approach. If you get your pitch early, you have to attack it. If you don’t, it makes sense to wait the pitcher out and force them to earn their way back into the count. To wit, Clemens is getting into 2-0 and 3-0 counts considerably more this year than in the last two, despite swinging more often on the first and second pitches. That means that when pitchers fall behind, he’s not bailing them out.
Clemens said he knows what to look for, and has tried to be more ready when what he’s looking for comes. That means having an idea of what segment of the strike zone he wants to attack, but not locking in so tightly on one pitch type that he can’t adjust and do damage if he gets a different offering that still enters his wheelhouse.
“You’re looking for a pitch in a general area,” he explained, “but us hitters, if they throw a slider that they popped outside and it’s gonna come to that same area and you recognize it, I think it’s instinctual for hitters to, say you’re sitting fastball middle-in or whatever and they accidentally leave a changeup up and it kind of falls over the plate, you can recognize that and react.”
Whether Clemens is part of the Twins’ future or not, his developmental arc this season is important, if it indicates that the team has a hitting infrastructure that works. That very thing has been in question all year. Clemens, though, said the team has helped him know when to go up there hacking.
“They’ve emphasized, this pitcher gives up a ton of damage in 0-0 counts, or be ready to hit early, because this is the most damage that he’s given up,” Clemens said. “That’s what they’ve emphasized over the course of the season.”
Clemens might not be back next season, but the team could do much worse than him as a platoon bat off the bench. He’s a positive influence in the clubhouse and a positive contributor to the lineup, thanks to his evolving approach and the way he thinks about and listens to others’ ideas on hitting. This approach comes with a low ceiling for OBP and hinges on connecting frequently enough to get to all of his power, but Clemens has shown an ability to maximize the value of that way of doing things. The Twins need more players who get the most out of their skills, not fewer.