Crack-n-Clank: Luke Keaschall and the Glorious History of Good Little Hitters Who Suck at Defense

There are a couple of old friends here; it's nice to see old friends. Are you old enough to remember Dan Ford? In his last season with the Twins, he was this level of good wood but hard leather. Maybe Matt Lawton is more in your wheelhouse, though. He could really hit, in his prime, but boy, he could be a butcher in the outfield, too, right?

It's easy to make this list longer. Just remove the limit on ISO. What I wanted, though, was to see whether and to what extent we've lost the not-so-slugging guy who can rake, but can't play defense no matter where you put him. Back when defensive assessments relied mostly on error counts and the eye test, to be sure, more poor fielders stayed on the field, especially if they benefited from the halo effect of being good hitters. Back then, though, teams also didn't always know a good hitter from a bad one. A guy might rack up a high but empty batting average and play for quite a while, despite not really adding much to the offense. Keaschall isn't that kind of player. He can genuinely hit, and he genuinely makes the lineup better, especially now that he's hitting at the top of it. He just can't help—or even avoid hurting—the team when it's the other team's turn at bat.

Historically, most of the players who get the chance to play in such a one-sided role do so either at a position where defense doesn't matter much (first base or DH) or in a league where you have to accept some tradeoffs. For instance, in the NL, some teams used to be willing to absorb a bad defender in left field to avoid having two weak spots in their lineup, since the pitchers then had to bat for themselves. Being great early in your career also bought you the right to get old (gracefully or not) while still playing a position you could no longer handle, especially if the alternative was losing a job altogether. Thence come the many entries for Lou Brock, and the pair for Derek Jeter.

For a long time, though, there were also a couple of guys in the league at any given time who were dreadful defenders even in their 20s, but who nonetheless held onto everyday jobs. The above list contains prime seasons from Jose Altuve, Ken Griffey Sr., and Lonnie Smith. Chris Coghlan won the 2009 NL Rookie of the Year Award as a crack-and-clank guy: lots of solid contact, lots of ugly plays in the field.

By and large, that player type has now been completely excised from the game. José Cardenal's career would be in real jeopardy if he came up today, rather than in the 1960s. Derek Bell's would be on the ropes, if he hadn't come up in the 1990s. Analytics sometimes make the perfect the enemy of the good, by highlighting what players do poorly and making those shortcomings their defining characteristics. However, neither teams nor fans are entirely wrong to think that way, in an era like this one. Cardenal (1970, 1973) and Bell (1994-95) had multiple seasons as excellent hitters and atrocious defenders, but each did that in the shadow of expansion years. There were five seasons in which the league had at least three crack-and-clank dudes: 1970, 1972, 1976, 1977 and 1979. The combination of uncertainty about defensive value and the thinning-out of talent pools via expansion in 1969 and 1977 made those profiles viable in those years. It's been almost 30 years since MLB last expanded; the league doesn't have as much use for Keaschall types right now.

How Luke Keaschall is Achieving More Power

Still, on balance, I think Keaschall deserves a bit of a break. He's a terrible defender. He's never going to not be a terrible defender. His nickname should be Boulder; it captures both his sturdy physique and his rock-hard hands. He's not going to show up next spring and be a good outfielder, even if he puts in considerable work this winter. There's nothing he does well in the field. He might come off this list next season, anyway, though, because his power is beginning to blossom. Over the last month, his ISO is .180—forget .150. His bat speed is up this season. Psrtially because of that (and partially because he's figured out how opponents want to attack him), he's learned how to get his bat working uphill more at contact and to pull the ball more consistently, while still utilizing his steep swing to get on top of the ball deep in the hitting zone and drive some pitches to right field. Here's a visualization of his swing at the contact point last year, via Statcast:

Here's the same dataviz for 2026. Note the more upright body position, more powerful extension of the arms, the orientation of the bat, and that higher bat speed.

Loosen the original crack-and-clank parameters I laid out to allow any ISO under .200, and some names you're much more comfortable with appear on the list in their 20s. Randy Arozarena had a great year in 2022. Shin-Soo Choo had one in 2012. And in 2004 and 2005, another right-handed hitter who was always hit-over-power and offense-over-defense slots into the list: Michael Young. That might just be the perfect comparator for Keaschall. He's a man out of time, but he can still find his way to being an above-average player.

The Twins will have to accept some red on the run-prevention side of the ledger to realize his full overall value, but Keaschall is trending toward being a Young-like player: someone who can compete for batting titles and produce moderate power, with athleticism that augments the offensive profile—even if the glove never seems to find any benefit from it. As a lover of many player profiles slowly going extinct under modern pressure to be perfect, I'm rooting for one more crack-and-clank guy to make good.