Oakland's Mark Canha is the best hitter you've never heard of

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

The list of baseball’s 10 best qualified hitters, from Opening Day 2019 through Saturday, unfurls about as expected.

Mike Trout is first. The ageless Nelson Cruz is second. Alex Bregman and Christian Yelich are third and fourth. Silver Slugger winners Juan Soto and Anthony Rendon are fifth and sixth. MVPs Cody Bellinger and Freddie Freeman are seventh and eighth. Two-time champion Xander Bogaerts is ninth.

The 10th man on the list is one who has never won the sort of honors routine to his exalted peers. His name is Mark Canha.

This is not a gag. It is a verifiable list of the best hitters by wRC+, a straightforward measure of runs created that considers the stadiums where games are played. Over nearly 1,000 plate appearances, the Oakland left fielder has been that good a hitter. He has hit .263/.391/.483. After accounting for the cavernous Coliseum he calls home, that line means Canha has hit better than Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts and Bryce Harper. 

"You could say," Canha told FOX Sports, "I had a different path to where I am now than those other guys."

You could. Canha, a left fielder, is overshadowed even in Oakland, where center fielder Ramón Laureano and corner-infield cornerstones Matt Olson and Matt Chapman are the bigger presences. To begin his professional career, Canha rose through the Marlins’ organization alongside Yelich, J.T. Realmuto and Marcell Ozuna, all of whom were considered far better prospects.

And all three soared past him. Canha didn’t make his major-league debut until he was 26, and he didn’t break out until 30. When the nine better hitters debuted, they were, on average, 21. Two of them were teenagers. By the time they turned 26, many of them had already agreed to nine-figure extensions.

Canha, now 32, will get his first chance at a life-changing payday when he becomes a free agent this fall. Until then, he will lead off for the first-place A’s.

Even that summary elides the struggle he surmounted to reach this point. Four years into his minor-league career, Canha had succeeded at every level, culminating in a strong 2014 season for Triple-A New Orleans. He hit .303 with 20 homers, and he believed his play warranted a call-up at season’s end. When he did not receive one, he drove to his Garden District home in tears.

"I can't play any better than that," he feared. "That’s the best of my ability, and it’s not good enough." 

Canha believed that because he had for years explored myriad sources of potential improvement. The fall after he was drafted, he lived at Brady Anderson’s Los Angeles home and trained with the former big leaguer (hence the sideburns). After Anderson took a job with the Orioles, Canha hit with private hitting coach after private hitting coach, including Robert Van Scoyoc, whom J.D. Martinez credits for resurrecting his career, and Doug Latta, whom Justin Turner credits for his.

That day in New Orleans, Canha and his wife, Marci, reached a resolution. They couldn’t afford to continue the minor-league grind, and the Marlins weren’t going to place Canha on their 40-man roster and protect him from the upcoming Rule 5 draft. He’d wait until then to see if any team were intrigued enough to select him.

If someone did, he’d have his chance. If no one did, he’d quit baseball for good. They’d move back to the Bay Area. Marci would find a job using her architecture degree; Mark would finish his political economy degree at Cal and look for work.

While he waited for the December day that would decide his fate, Canha traveled to the Dominican Republic to play in its winter league. He brought with him the disappointment of being overlooked, the fear that he had peaked. His swing and approach were not right, and he hit .100 in 17 games before he was released. "He basically got booed out of the Dominican," said Andy Barkett, his manager there. "I felt so bad for him."

The A’s still arranged to acquire Canha in the Rule 5 draft, believing in what he had done in the minors. His career could continue. Hoping to put his winter-ball stint behind him before spring training, Canha cold-emailed a North Carolina hitting instructor whose YouTube swing analyses he appreciated. 

"I had a great year in aaa this yr with the Marlins," he wrote, "but I’m looking to improve my game/understand my swing even more."

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Canha flew to North Carolina and spent 10 January days with Chas Pippitt, reworking his swing and mending his stride. He then reported to spring training and won a platoon role on the 2015 A’s.

Canha showed that year that he belonged in the bigs, but he did not produce another competent season until 2018.

Canha has always been someone who explored the game. When he slumped to begin 2013 with the Double-A Jacksonville Suns, he procured a copy of "A Zen Way of Baseball," Sadaharu Oh’s meticulous, autobiographical take on his hitting journey and the beauty of baseball. One evening early that season, somewhere in the Southern League, he cracked into it in a quiet moment in the dugout before a game. Amazed how relatable it felt, he kept reading.

Fifteen minutes from first pitch, Barkett, Canha’s manager then, too, spotted his first baseman engrossed in the book. He shook his head in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing, kid?" he asked. "Go get your bat, go out there and compete, and kick somebody’s ass."

"It’s that cynical minor-league manager kind of mindset that you have," Barkett said. "You’re going, ‘All right, Canha’s not gonna be worth a damn tonight.’"

At every level, Canha challenged norms. He tinkered with his swing so often that coaches and scouts suspected he’d never last in the major leagues, where everyone slumps and the best hitters snap out of it sooner than their peers. But thinking about how to make it work, he said, always worked for him.

"Maybe I’m different than other dudes, but I’m a thinker," Canha said. "I’m always thinking. Sometimes I think about mechanics while I’m in the box, and they say they never do that. But I do it. I don’t care. That’s my way. You do your way; I’ll do my way."

Canha values his way. He alone searches for the best restaurants in American metropolises, while his teammates prefer safe steakhouses. He has been walking up to Madonna’s "Like a Virgin" this season.

When asked why last week, he told reporters that his walk-up song was for him, not for anyone else. He also said he was a big fan. "I love her music and how it makes me feel," he said. 

Canha has continued to read baseball books. He devoured Ted Williams’ "The Science of Hitting" and, more recently, Shawn Green’s "The Way of Baseball." Careful consideration is his preferred salve to the relentlessness of each season. 

"Becoming obsessed with baseball, with hitting, immersing myself in that as a true passion, was kind of my way of handling it," he said. "It’s more than just my job. It became an obsession, and that’s my way of making it fun. I see it as a puzzle I have to try to figure out."

Canha deciphered another piece near the end of the 2018 season, when he garnered his first extended time in center field. From that angle, he was amazed how many times hitters swung at borderline pitches with which they could do little. And they did it before pitchers amassed two strikes!

"I realized I was swinging early in the count, afraid of striking out and afraid of getting to two strikes," he said. "I decided I wasn’t going to do that anymore."

He resolved to be more confident in his talent, to swing at only the pitches he knew he could hit hard, to accept any additional called strikes that came. In 2019, Canha reduced the rate at which he swung at balls to 25%, down from nearly 38% at his peak. He has chased less in 2020 and '21 while swinging at about the same amount of strikes. 

His patience has produced one of the league’s best on-base percentages three years running. Also contributing: his remarkable ability (willingness?) to be hit by pitches. He stands close to the plate, and his 10 plunks lead the major leagues this season, marking his fourth consecutive season in double digits.

Canha’s selectivity enabled his dormant power to emerge. He has launched 40 homers since 2019’s start, helping the A’s to playoff appearances in each season. 

In 2021, they are again on track to qualify for October play. Canha epitomizes their success in recent seasons. The A’s don’t have the stars their peers do.

In 2020, they were the only AL playoff team without a position player who received MVP votes. Rather, they relied on a lineup full of competent players.

In the minor leagues, Canha demonstrated a grasp of all the tools, if not mastery of any. He could throw, he could run, he could field, he could hit, and he could hit for power. But he tried so many different techniques that his experimentation masked his skills, especially to those who were taught that consistency correlated with success and deviation with failure.

Barkett appreciates now that Canha read all the books, dabbled with all the changes, languished over all his failings, to get here.

"Mark is one of the greatest kids I’ve ever been around," Barkett said. "I’m glad he was able to grow his self-confidence and make the adjustments he needed to make to become the player he’s become."

The confidence comes from the work. Canha convinces himself that he has done everything possible to succeed, and he succeeds beyond what he imagined.

"I always believed that I should get a chance," he said. "But I never thought that I would do as well as I've been doing."

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on twitter at @pedromoura.