Pittsburgh — Max Clark and some of the other Detroit Tigers rookies went to dinner in Pittsburgh Sunday night. The topic quickly turned to the one thing they all have in common right now — the vagaries, nuances and challenges of transitioning and adjusting to big-league pitching. “We were talking about how it’s just insane how quickly the league transitions,” Clark said. “It’s not week by week. It’s literally series by series.”
It didn’t take the league long to see that Clark, when he first came up, was susceptible to high-velocity fastballs and he was seeing a healthy dose of them. Going into Monday, 72.4% of the pitches he’d seen were heaters, four-seamers or sinkers. He was hitting .227 on the four-seamers and .267 on the sinkers. So imagine Cleveland right-hander Tanner Bibee’s surprise last Tuesday when Clark laced a 93.6 mph heater for a single with an exit velocity of 103.6 mph. Later in the game he smoked another fastball to the track. He hit two more heaters hard the next day, too. And guess what happened by the time the White Sox rolled in? “Spin, spin, spin,” Clark said. “And instead of fours (four-seamers), I was getting sinkers.” This is the league. When they say it's a game of adjustments, it's no joke. And that saying goes for rookies and veterans alike. “You just have to find ways to learn and find ways to get on time,” he said. “I’ve covered heaters in the last few games much better. It’s not fouling balls off to the left. It’s not swing and miss. It’s more hard-hit outs, deep fly balls and some base hits, a single above the zone.” And one ringing triple off a sinker from White Sox reliever Huascar Brazoban. The adjustment: He changed his timing method. He replaced the toe-tap with a modified leg kick. “I cleaned it up,” Clark said. “The toe-tap was creating a lot of extra movement that I didn’t need. The reason we implemented it originally was because of some range of motion issues I was having, just in holding and controlling my forward move.” The leg kick is his natural movement. It’s what he’s done his entire baseball life until this January when he and his hitting coaches decided to put in the toe-tap in an effort to stay sturdier on his back side and not leaping at pitches and losing his balance and leverage as often. But, as he’s gotten stronger, he found his range of motion has improved and he can hold his base with the leg kick. “I only had, like, 350 plate appearances with the toe-tap,” he said. “I was able to just throw that leg kick back in there and I immediately found more success.” This won’t be the last adjustment he will need to make. But his presence of mind, his awareness, his general baseball intelligence is well beyond his age and professional experience. You like his chances of adapting to whatever gets thrown his way. “I feel like you can double that at-bat total in his mind because he watches the games intently and he pays a lot of attention to other hitters around the league,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said. “When I hear him talk about players who are in the big leagues, players he’s played against, he’s just way observant. He’s a baseball rat, through and through. “He’s remarkably advanced with his baseball knowledge and the way he watches the game. He’s as dialed into this sport at that age as anybody I’ve seen.” Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com @cmccosky This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers' Max Clark finding his groove since going back to a leg kick