Unbelievable Facts About Chris Davis

Chris Davis, the much-maligned, obscenely-paid first-baseman for the Baltimore Orioles established a record for batting futility that may never be reached again. Nobody has ever gone as many at bats in a row without a single base hit as Chris Davis has from the end of the 2018 season to today. The record is his alone and is the benchmark for putrid batting forever. But Davis' failure to hit is not a recent phenomenon. It actually goes back to the last month of the 2017 season. And the numbers are unfathomable.

I cannot grapple with my feelings about Chris Davis. A large part of me feels like I am piling on. Failure is no fun for anyone. At the same time, Davis is rich beyond his wildest dreams and will continue adding to that pile for years to come. I do not know. I guess mostly I feel badly for him.

The real problem for Chris Davis started in the last month of the 2017 season. His numbers were not great for the years 2014, 2016 and most of 2017. His batting average and strikeout rates were terrible. But his OPS+ hovered around league average for those years because of his walk rate and the decent power numbers. But then you get to the last month of 2017.

In that month, Chris Davis came to the plate a hundred times and he had 88 official at bats. He only had 14 hits and struck out 40 times. That works out to a .159 batting average, a .260 OBP and since he only had 29 Total Bases in 26 games, that worked out to a .330 Slugging Percentage. That gave him a .590 OPS for the month. Things have never improved since.

In 2018, Davis had arguably the worst batting season of all time. In 522 Plate Appearances and 470 At Bats, all Davis could muster was 79 hits and 41 walks. His season's batting average was .168. His On Base Percentage was .243 and his Slugging Percentage was a puny .296. His OPS of .539 was good for an OPS+ of 50 (100 is average) and rated a 46 in wRC+.

Let's add together the last month of 2017, all of 2018 and his zero for 28 start (with four walks) for 2019. That gives us a line of: 654 (PA), 586 (AB), 48 Runs, 93 Hits, 15 doubles, 20 homers, 59 RBI, 56 walks, 6 HBP and 247 strikeouts. What does that all add up to?  A .159 Batting Average, a .237 On Base Percentage and a Slugging Percentage of .287. His OPS for all of that would then equal .524. Wowzers! His strikeout rate would be 38%. Consider that his 247 strikeouts far outpaced his combined total of hits and walks by 98!

It gets worse the more you look at it. In 2018, Chris Davis had a .327 OPS in games considered Late and Close. That is lower than many batters' On Base Percentage! His OPS was .399 in what were considered High Leverage situations. He had a .484 OPS facing "Ground Ball Pitchers." His OPS against "Power Pitchers" was .463. His OPS against pitchers with an average fastball was .485. He had a .493 OPS against left-handed pitchers.

These are all bizarre numbers! Here is another one for you: Since 1867, Chris Davis' -2.8 rWAR was tied for the eighth worst baseball-reference.com WAR season total ever. Fangraphs.com came in with a -3.1 fWAR which would have ranked Davis' 2018 as the fourth worst all time. Chris Davis' 127 times on base last season was tied for the sixteenth lowest all time for a player with over 500 plate appearances. And it was the worst since Todd Cruz in 1982 playing for the Mariners. And his .168 Batting Average of a year ago is the worst all time for a player with over 500 Plate Appearances.

Those are all numbers for the 2018 season. He has big fat zeroes for 2019. So stretching back to the last month of the 2017 season, no one has batted lower than Chris Davis...ever!

And, I can guarantee you that none of the players worse than Davis in WAR in a single season ever made $23 million for doing so.

What would you do if you were the Baltimore Orioles. The team cannot keep running him out there, can they? The money is a wash. It is bye bye. There is no way they will get any value from the deal. And the deal runs three more years after this one! The Orioles should simply cut their losses. It is totally embarrassing for a team to have a national television cut in to see if Davis would break the futility record. And the networks got their money's worth. Chris Davis needs to be put out of his misery and the fans need to have closure on this legendary saga of batting garbage dumpage.

The Orioles are leaking

General Managers are only as good as their team's performance in the past season. Dan Duquette was genius last season as the Orioles surprised everyone with blowing out the AL East and making it to the American League Championship Series. Duquette brought in pieces that worked perfectly such as Nelson Cruz and Andrew Miller. But so far this off season seems to show a general leaking of talent as Cruz, Miller and now Nick Markakis have been allowed to sign in greener pastures. Will the Orioles be one and done?

Such a pronouncement in December with almost five months of the off season yet to come would be misguided. But the Orioles have allowed at least six wins of offense and two wins of relief pitching to head out the door. In the long run, these decisions may be wise as the total expense of those players long term might be painful. But in the short term, Orioles fans might be getting a little antsy.

The Red Sox and Blue Jays have improved themselves greatly thus far--at least on paper. The Yankees have been spinning in place and the Rays seem in disarray (but with a still promising rotation). If you compare teams in the AL East, you have to look at the Orioles as an 89-win team after losing that talent. Can they make it up in other ways? Perhaps.

The team still has a strong core in Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy, Manny Machado, Chris Davis and Matt Wieters. There are questions marks among that group. Can Davis bounce back off a disappointing season and stay clean? How will Wieters respond after missing so much time with a rebuilt elbow? Can Machado's knees hold up or is this a chronic season to season thing? But let's, for now, assume that those folks will all contribute ably.

The starting staff will return all the same pitchers back into the mix even though Bud Norris has had his name rumored in trades all winter. They are not a great rotation, but with good defense, they get the job done. The loss of Miller will hurt, but the bullpen was pretty good before he even got there and that same cast is back for another season.

With that much stability (barring injuries), how can the production and play of Markakis and Cruz be made up?

Markakis is probably the easiest to replace. No knock on the guy as he has been a very good player for the Orioles. But his offense has only been about seven percent better than league average and that is not as hard to replace as you think. The most obvious answer seems to be Dariel Alvarez, the Cuban refugee the O's signed in 2013. He has raked pretty consistently in the minors and while he is not that patient a hitter, he does hit enough to replace Markakis if his minor league play is an indication.

The only other minor league options such as Mike Yastrzemski and Josh Hart are still a year or two away.

Harder to replace is Nelson Cruz. While Cruz never saw a pitch he didn't like to swing at, his power is a high commodity in today's market. How do the Orioles close that gap? To me, expecting Steve Pearce to repeat his season last year also seems to be dicey. So that is a lot of power to replace.

Let's say that Wieters comes back as good as he was. That is a plus total of 17 homers over the five he hit last year before he was hurt. If Chris Davis can be somewhere between his monster 2013 and disappointing 2014, he could hit 35 homers and add seven more to the total. Platooning Davis with Christian Walker might produce the same results with a better overall batting average.

I'm not sure Jonathan Schoop will ever develop into an effective MLB hitter. His thirteen walks for all of 2014 are a red flag to me as it led to a .244 OBP. But he could add another six homers to his total of 14 last season. And add to that a bounce-back power year for J.J. Hardy who was way below his career yearly homer output last season could make up some more.

If all of that goes well, which, of course, is a big if, the Orioles could make up the power lost by Nelson Cruz. Whether they can overcome the lack of Cruz's presence in the lineup is a very big question.

Like I said, there is a lot of off season left to go and I'm sure Dan Duquette is not going to stand pat. Adding Melky Cabrera or someone of that caliber might still be a possibility.

But even if Duquette stands pat, as I have outlined, the Orioles might be okay as is. The core is still there. For the most part, a team built on defense and a winning attitude instilled by Buck Showalter could keep the Orioles in the mix. Only time will tell if this General Manager will go from hero to bum or whether he was shrewd to let those players walk when he did. I wouldn't count the Orioles out.

The disappointing season of Chris Davis

Nobody expected Chris Davis to be able to match what he did last year when he hit over fifty homers and was worth 54 runs on offense. He was on my regression list to start the season and pretty much everyone else's. But I at least thought he would be better than what he has shown thus far. After 55 games, his offense has only been worth 2.4 runs on offense and his slugging percentage has fallen almost 200 points.

Maybe it is the Brady Anderson disease. Remember Brady Anderson? He's the Oriole player that hit 50 homers in 1996 in one of the all-outlier seasons and hit 18 the following season. But at least Anderson still batted .288 the next season with a .393 on-base percentage. Davis, after batting .286 last year with a .370 on-base percentage a year ago, is only batting .228 with a .338 on-base percentage.

One thing I notice from his spray charts is that he is not hitting the ball with authority to the opposite field. The first spray chart (courtesy of Fangraphs.com) shows what he did last year and notice all the black home run balls to the opposite field:

Now look at this year's:

He has only hit one homer to the opposite field. He is hitting more line drives the other way, but his natural pull tendency has gotten even stronger. This allows the defense to really bunch him up and his BABIP is off 50 points from last year despite a five point increase in his line drive percentage.

His batted ball tendency is heightened because of his strikeout rate, which is always going to be high. He is striking out at the same pace as last year (just under 30%) even though his plate discipline is better (walk rate is up from a year ago). His swing and miss rate is higher than last year.

What is somewhat disturbing is that this trend really started in the second half of last year. Davis did most of his damage in the first half when he hit 37 of his homers. If you put his second half of last year with the first half of this year together, it adds up to a triple slash line of .237/.339/.482.

While the result is still better than average and good for a 117 wRC+, it certainly isn't the 167 wRC+ that he attained last year.

Chris Davis still has one of the sweetest strokes in baseball and he can hit the ball out of any ballpark. But last year and particularly the first part of last year seem more and more like anomalous to who he is. We all thought he would regress, but not to this extent. Let's hope he can flip the switch in the second half and be the kind of player the Orioles hoped he was building up to be.

Position players pitching is cute...but...

Yes, we can all smile when a baseball game devolves into a seventeen inning contest and the managers have no choice but to pitch position players. Isn't it cute that Chris Davis and Darnell McDonald pitched? One did well and got the win. The other did not do well at all and earned a crash and burn loss. Yes, we all want to see the video highlights of this little side show. But the assumption here is that the managers had no choice. Is that accurate?

There is some concession here when a team is getting blown out and does not want to tax its pitching staff. The game is already out of hand and what the heck, right? But even making that concession, there is some concern that putting position players on the mound are toying with those players' health. You are asking a guy who doesn't normally pitch to do so and arm injuries could result. Isn't that what happened to Jose Canseco? And usually such an event means that the guy tasked with pitching is usually one of the last people on the 25-man roster. Darnell McDonald certainly fits that category. Aaron Miles is that kind of player. So that concession is made with some reservation. You are not going to risk injury to one of your "good" players.

But with a game on the line? Seasons can be won or lost based on one win. The Boston Red Sox finished only a game out of the playoffs last year. Is that a proper time to pitch a position player? Hardly. Again, the assumption is that the managers, Buck Showalter and Bobby Valentine, had no choice but to go with position players when they did. That is an argument that does not sit well here. Couldn't you go with the starting pitchers slated for the next day and then make a roster move for a day to cover the next day's starts? Felix Doubront could have been called upon and Showalter could have gone with Brian Matusz. The object is to win a game and worry about tomorrow...tomorrow.

It is hard to argue with Showalter because Chris Davis got the job done. He pitched two scoreless innings and won the game. Showalter comes across as a genius here. Chris Davis is not one of the last players on the Orioles' roster. He is a central figure in the Orioles' offense. That is a huge risk to take with one of your important bats. Bobby Valentine was not so fortunate. Darnell McDonald was crushed and took the loss. It was a loss the Red Sox could ill-afford to add to their already sorry win-loss record. And yet Valentine threw in the towel and felt that hoping against hope that McDonald could get major league hitters out was his best option at the time.

It wasn't. The game was on the line. A season is in the balance. Every game is important and when you have a chance to win, you have to go for it--tomorrow be damned. Valentine chose not to go for the win. He threw in the towel. That is unconscionable.

Position players pitching is cute. But not with the game on the line. Not in a seventeen inning tie game. Not when a victory was still possible.