Coming Down to Earth: Chris Daivs

Coming Down to Earth

            When Chris Davis started his breakout campaign last season no one expected the levels of production we got.  Considering I drafted him in one of my leagues in the 4^th to last round of a 12-team league one could say I had a pretty good season.  He instantly became a top 4 first-base men almost over night and became the golden boy of the home run; I didn’t buy it for a second.  Last season was amazing for Davis don’t get me wrong and I enjoyed the ride but I traded him for David Wright to try and stabilize my offense a little.  So why not take a look at what Davis has done so far during his 2014 season and see if he has truly lived up to the hype that was around him last season.

	BB/K	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	OPS	BABIP	wOBA	wRC+
2014	0.46	.212	.333	.415	.203	.749	.262	.326	103
2013	0.36	.286	.370	.634	.231	1.004	.348	.421	167
League AVG	0.39	.251	.316	.390	.139	.706	.298	.312	96
Career	0.27	.260	.328	.503	.242	.830	.328	.355	118

            So there’s one question we have to ask from these stats, which Chris Davis is the real Chris Davis?  Well this is a tough call to make looking at the numbers is its obvious that Davis is having a down year compared to last season but many of his numbers aren’t really that bad.  He’s still hitting for a good OPS and his ISO is still way higher than the rest of the league but his BA is down quite a bit.  His BB’s are up which is a good sign though he is still striking out at a 29.7% rate which is about what he always does so the extra BB’s is a big plus for him.  Since his contact skill has always been a pretty big question mark the fact that his BA is down isn’t a shock to anyone but the ability to keep a very strong OBP is something that I wouldn’t have expected.  I think we need to have add some more context to see if we can get a picture and see why he’s playing the way he is.

R/L Splits

RHP

	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	BABIP	wOBA	wRC+
2014	17.8%	28.8%	.204	.353	.408	.761	.204	.244	.330	106
2013	13.4%	28.8%	.316	.415	.728	1.142	.411	.371	.473	203
Career	9.7%	30.0%	.269	.344	.525	.868	.256	.337	.369	128

LHP

	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	BABIP	wOBA	wRC+
2014	5.2%	32.2%	.216	.284	.409	.690	.193	.288	.306	90
2013	5.9%	31.0%	.235	.289	.475	.763	.240	.284	.329	104
Career	5.2%	31.8%	.238	.286	.447	.734	.209	.306	.317	93

            I decided to take a look at the splits to see if there were any real answers to the difference from last year to this year and boy did we get our first answer to the question.  Davis went berserk against RHP last year, look at that OPS for starters let alone that ISO.  It’s clear that last years numbers were a product of really capitalizing on RHP since you look at his performance against LHP really was on line with his career totals.  In fact his stat line is almost identical from last year to this year against LHP though his ISO is down a little.  The thing we can take from these charts is that last year was the anomaly and it’s not fair to judge him on last year’s numbers.  The fact that every stat is just so ridiculously high that it really hid his flaws against LHP.  So did this answer the question of Chris Davis?  Kind of, it gives us some major insight to who is the real Davis but we can always add more context to see what else we can see.

Batted Ball

	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB
2014	0.84	25.2%	34.2%	40.6%	20.6%
2013	0.71	21.9%	32.4%	45.7%	29.6%
Career	0.87	23.1%	35.9%	41.0%	22.3%

            Davis’ biggest asset is his power and he has lot of it.  We can see that this year though he’s hitting the ball a little bit straighter than normal hitting more GB’s and LD’s than he did last year.  This isn’t exactly a bad thing since both his LD and FB rates are above league average and his GB rate is below league average, which for Davis is a good thing.  These numbers lead us to believe that he is still hitting the ball hard but not exactly in the right places as we can see from the lower BABIP.  His HR totals will take a hit obviously but it means going from 50 to 35 or so.

Plate Discipline

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Swing%	O-Contact	Z-Contact	Contact%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2014	31.1%	75.1%	49.8%	49.5%	77.1%	67.2%	63.1%	16.0%
2013	35.7%	74.5%	51.1%	55.1%	79.6%	69.3%	56.6%	15.2%
Career	36.6%	74.9%	52.9%	53.6%	78.3%	68.5%	61.1%	16.2%

            One thing that is impressive about Davis is that increased BB% when he’s such a big free swinger.  He has lowered the swings outside the zone by quite a bit too; he’s only swinging about 2 percent more than the league average.  He is very aggressive in the zone and swings 10 percent more than the league does and he misses 10 percent of the time as well.  For all his aggressiveness he does actually miss making contact a bit too much but its hard to argue with when he does.  The lowering of his O-Swing% is actually a telling sign of why his BB% is going up and actually is better for him in the long term.

Hot/Cold Charts

Swing%

7% (28)	14% (42)	28% (39)	21% (33)	0% (16)
19% (42)	54% (63)	82% (60)	58% (50)	9% (23)
21% (57)	68% (92)	83% (82)	73% (53)	27% (23)
24% (51)	69% (78)	76% (75)	67% (39)	50% (10)
27% (45)	42% (45)	53% (49)	52% (27)	19% (27)

Contact%

50% (2)	50% (6)	27% (11)	43% (7)	0% (0)
38% (8)	65% (35)	78% (49)	72% (29)	100% (2)
77% (13)	68% (63)	76% (68)	93% (41)	100% (7)
50% (12)	65% (55)	86% (58)	73% (26)	20% (5)
8% (12)	60% (20)	35% (26)	29% (14)	0% (5)

            The Contact% is much lower than I think most people would think of a power hitter like Davis but more importantly it’s the contact in the sweet spot of the strike zone that makes me raise an eyebrow.  For a guy that is swinging 83% of the time and making contact only 76% that does seem rather low to me.  This just seems to be who Chris Davis is, he swings a lot and he doesn’t make consistent contact but when he does it goes far.

            So through all this we wanted to find out the answer to one question.  Who is the real Chris Davis?  Well given what we’ve seen how lucky his season was last year and the fact that his other stats actually line up to career numbers besides last years I can say that he’s closer to who he is now than he was last year.  I don’t think he’s actually a .212 hitter and I can see him hitting .250 by seasons end, maybe .245, and still maintaining that impressive BB% and decent OBP.  The power is there it’s just not at the levels of last year but he could still end the season with 30 HR’s and I don’t think anyone would argue against that.  If you want Chris Davis in fantasy leagues this is the time to grab him, you don’t want him to get hot real quick and all of a sudden you’ve missed your chance.