Scouting
Report: Chris Davis
Baseball
is a numbers game, the stats can tell me and other scouts a lot about a
player. But that doesn’t mean
there are players that can break the mold that they casted for themselves. Jacoby Ellsbury hitting 30 HR’s, Brady
Anderson hitting 50 HR’s, Jeff Bagwell being the first (and only) 1B to have a
30/30 season. There are more but
many of these guys were 1 time only deals so when we start to see players in
this day and age do something we don’t expect we start to take notice. Chris Davis is this year’s case of
taking that step forward in talent and has become a giant in baseball and
fantasy baseball. So today I want
to take a closer look at this HR monster and see if he really is as good as he
seems.
The
first thing we should look at and the first thing most people are going to
notice; is the power legit. In
short yes, this is very legit and he has shown lots of power his short
career. Davis has a .679 SLG at
this point and an OPS of 1.054, which is very good and to prove that his power
is legit his ISO (Isolated Power) is .379 an amazing half of his SLG is power
and the rest is based on his BA.
He is currently hitting a HR every 9.7 PA; this doesn’t seem
sustainable. Davis hitting a HR
every 3-4 games does seem like a lot to keep up.
Davis touts a wRC
(weighted Runs Created) of 101; which puts him in the top 90% percentile. That means not only has he been scoring
runs he’s created many opportunities for his team to score runs. His wRAA (weighted Runs Above Average)
is at 47.5 meaning he is worth 47.5 more runs than the average player at this
point. There is one thing that I
will say that to temper the excitement; Davis has a HR/FB rate of 33.3%, which
is 11% higher than his career total.
To put that into perspective; Barry Bonds has a career 25.1% HR/FB ratio
and never had a season better than 29.6%.
Now
that we’ve talked about Davis’ power we need to discuss the other aspect of
hitting the BA. Before the All
Star break Chris Davis had a BA of .315, a very solid number. He is currently batting .300 which
doesn’t sound bad until you realize what he has to bat to get that number,
since the All Star break Davis is batting .238 which is bad to say the least. This is what I ment when I said earlier
we take notice, sometimes there’s something that just does quite fit and with
Davis, this year, it’s the BA and OBP that worry me. Lets take a close look at what this guy has been doing and
why I tend to caution people about him.
Davis
is batting .300 and an OBP of .375 which both are very above average for many
players but Davis in particular this is stunning. Again lets look at the splits; I mentioned his BA has
dropped significantly since the start of the second half but how is the
OBP? First half we ended with a
.392 OBP, which even I admit is amazing for anyone this day and age. His OBP for the second half is
currently sitting at .302, at this point his OBP has dropped 90 points from
what he was doing before the break; that puts the 20 point overall drop into
perspective. Another sign is how
he gets his OBP is based more on his BA then BB but its not as big of a
difference as you’d think, his eOBP is currently at .075 meaning he’s more BA
than BB. Another interesting thing
to note is that his BABIP is roughly 10 points higher than his career numbers,
.345 this year and .337 career.
This tells me that he’s not getting super lucky he’s just hitting close
to normal; his BA could drop though when this averages out and his BA of .300
would become .292 not bad for Davis.
Now
what are the chances that he does start declining? There’s no way of telling when this can happen but we can
see very clearly if it will; if we take a look at his swing rate we can see his
habits and can take a guess.
Looking at his swing rate he’s swinging at about 36% of pitches out side
the zone; which sounds good right?
Well not at all in fact that puts him in the bottom 10% of players in
swinging out of the zone. He is
swinging at a lot of pitches in the zone as well; roughly 76% of the time he
swings in the zone. Though here’s
part where I get worried, Davis’ contact rate out of the zone is 53% and that’s
very low. He’s swinging to much
and not hitting enough of the pitches to make it worth while which could come
back and bit him near the end of the season or next year. As you’d expect he makes a lot of
contact in the zone at 80%; which is very good. His overall contact rate is a miserable 69% putting him in
the bottom 10% again in contact rate and pitchers are taking notice of this
only throwing 40% of pitches he sees in the zone. The last thing to note is that his K/BB% is sitting at 3.56;
he’s K just over 3 times before he takes a walk with is not beyond redemption
but if it wasn’t for his power numbers it would be hard to overlook.
I
drafted Chris Davis with the 189th pick overall and ran with him
until the trade deadline. I traded
him straight up for David Wright who, as of right now, may very well be out for
the season. I say this because
this shows how much I worry about him.
But through all I’ve said I see great things for Davis, yes I didn’t sound
to high on Chris Davis but that’s because I don’t see him as the player he’s
playing like right now. Davis is a
.270 hitter but he does have massive power potential and I can see 50 HR’s
yearly and wouldn’t blink an eye at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment