Collette Calls: Breaking Down Chris Davis

Written by

Updated on August 15, 2015 4:54PM EST

Our Rotowire Preseason Outlook for Chris Davis read as such:

Davis was one of the biggest disappointments in fantasy baseball during the 2014 season, as he failed to get back on track after suffering an oblique injury in late April. To make matters worse, Davis failed a second test for amphetamines late in 2014 and missed the rest of his disappointing season. It was later revealed that despite a medical need for Adderall, Davis did not have an exemption for its use in 2013 or 2014. If the big seasons of Melky Cabrera, Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta post-PED suspension are any indication, discounting Davis in 2015 due to the 2014 performance would be a mistake. It's also worth noting that he was approved for an exemption to take Adderall again in 2015. Davis can still hit 30-plus home runs in his sleep, offering a reasonable floor even if he's unable to return to his 2013 level again.
That was certainly a supportive writeup. I piled on shortly thereafter in an early February piece:

Underdrafted - Chris Davis (ADP - 71) - How many players can you safely say will hit 30 home runs in 2015? Davis is projected to do that by Steamer and is one of 10 players to have such an honor. He hit 26 last year with injuries and distractions and has dual-position eligibility now as well. People are taking Evan Longoria 50 picks ahead of Davis in some leagues because of the better

Since then, it has been a completely different story.

Twenty-thirteen was an amazing year for anyone who took the flyer on the breakout signs Davis flashed in 2012, but two months into the season, that level of production looked like a distant memory. Davis is in his walk year of his deal, and as the unofficial start to the summer arrived, things did not look good for him.

(OD = Opening Day; MD = Memorial Day)

SPLIT	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	ISO	K%	BB%	wOBA
2013	673	.286	.370	.634	.348	30	11	.421
2014	525	.196	.300	.404	.209	33	11	.308
OD-MD	166	.212	.295	.432	.219	37	10	.320

His strikeout rate continued to decline, and while he was hitting for a little more pop, his batting average continued to suffer. The puzzling thing was that Davis's plate habits really had not changed much.

SPLIT	PA	SWING%	CONTACT%	O-SWING%	SWING%
2013	673	49	67	32	16
2014	525	46	64	28	17
OD-MD	166	47	64	29	17

He was chasing fewer pitches out of the zone, but making less contact as he struggled with making contact on pitches in the strike zone. When a batter is struggling with contact within the zone, we can look at how they handle non-fastballs -- pitches batters think will end up in one place but end up in another. Hitting fastballs hasn't been the issue for Davis in recent years. In fact, it was not even a problem during the first two months of the season:

SPLIT	PITCHES	BA	SLG	BABIP	CONTACT%	SWING%
2013	1,615	.273	.569	.311	74	12
2014	1,294	.238	.516	.293	69	13
OD-MD	382	.288	.588	.372	69	14

While Davis was not making as much contact with fastballs as he had in 2013, in the first third of this season, when he did connect with them, he punished them. Non-fastballs were another story.

When you picture Chris Davis batting, you picture a guy looking to turn and burn a pitch 500 feet who still has enough power and plate coverage to make you pay the other way if you don't miss the sweet spot of his bat. The issue for any pull hitter, though, is if they're looking for hard stuff and then get anything else, they will be out in front or over the ball. So, if they do make contact, it's in sub-optimal stages of the swing. In Davis's case, it led to extremely sub-optimal results when he put non-fastballs in play:

SPLIT	PITCHES	BA	SLG	BABIP	CONTACT%	SWING%
2013	990	.299	.705	.370	59	24
2014	850	.140	.249	.184	57	23
OD-MD	166	.121	.242	.200	57	21

Davis blames his oblique injury last year.

"I think I spent so much of last season and even the offseason taking swings that I had taken last year that weren't really the swings I was looking for," Davis said Tuesday in Seattle. "I think I was trying to protect [the oblique] and subconsciously there was a little uncertainty about letting it go.."
Manager Buck Showalter expounded further upon Davis's issues:

"When he squares the ball up, it usually goes places where you can't catch it. You know how frustrating it must be to have that power at your fingertips and not always be able to get to it. And of course pitchers don't always cooperate.
"He has power all over the ballpark. It just doesn't have to be pull power. I think Chris realized the more pull-conscious he is, the more challenging it can become for him. It's something he's become more comfortable staying out all over the field."
If we use Bill Petti and Jeff Zimmerman's Spray Chart Tool, the results don't immediately show up in the batted-ball distribution as much as they do in the batted-ball type.

Note that while Davis continues to hit the ball to all parts of the yard, he is hitting much fewer groundballs and more line drives, which directly impacts his spike in batting average. His batted-ball distance has also increased by 20 feet, showing that he is making better contact.

Quietly, the 2013 Chris Davis has returned. Look at his numbers since Memorial Day when added to the first chart in this story:

SPLIT	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	ISO	K%	BB%	wOBA
2013	673	.286	.370	.634	.348	30	11	.421
2014	525	.196	.300	.404	.209	33	11	.308
OD-MD	166	.212	.295	.432	.219	37	10	.320
Since MD	298	.282	.366	.602	.320	28	12	.415

Scary, right? How about his plate discipline?

Since

SPLIT	PA	SWING%	CONTACT%	O-SWING%	SWING%
2013	673	49	67	32	16
2014	525	46	64	28	17
OD-MD	166	47	64	29	17
298	46	65	27	16

Davis is chasing fewer pitches out of the zone and making more contact at the pitches he does offer at. The fastballs he is hitting these days are going farther, and his BABIP is down on fastballs because he is hitting those pitches out of the park and home runs aren't factored into BABIP. Since Memorial Day, Davis has homered 18 times off fastballs; he did so 24 times in all 2013.

SPLIT	PITCHES	BA	SLG	BABIP	CONTACT%	SWING%
2013	1,615	.273	.569	.311	74	12
2014	1,294	.238	.516	.293	69	13
OD-MD	382	.288	.588	.372	69	14
Since MD	737	.292	.701	.297	69	14

The real magic is in how Davis is now hitting non-fastballs. The added benefit of not being so pull-conscious is that it allows Davis to sit back and wait on pitches that he was struggling to handle in 2014 and earlier this season when he would roll over on those pitches or put them harmlessly in play too frequently.

SPLIT	PITCHES	BA	SLG	BABIP	CONTACT%	SWING%
2013	990	.299	.705	.370	59	24
2014	850	.140	.249	.184	57	23
OD-MD	166	.121	.242	.200	57	21
Since MD	496	.269	.462	.344	60	19

These days, Davis is handling the offspeed pitches better than ever in terms of making contact. While he's not hitting as many home runs against them as he did in 2013, the in-season improvement has been rather dramatic.

The one thing, besides the power, what made Chris Davis so dangerous in 2013 was his tremendous plate coverage. He could hit something low and away the other way for a home run just as easily as he could hit something low and in. Davis's heat map these days looks like a giant fireball within the strikezone, making it very tough on pitchers to neutralize him. The best way to do so is still to pitch him in so he cannot extend those long arms and crush. Last year and in the first part of this year, pitchers could get Davis on sequencing of pitches and use his pull tendencies against him. Now that he's fully healthy and using all fields, beating Davis has become all about location of pitches. Given that few major league pitchers can locate pitches consistently, he is winning the battle more often than not in recent weeks.

Using our Earned Auction Values calculator, Davis ranks 13th among all batters in 12-team mixed formats with $30 of production. Only Paul Goldschmidt and Anthony Rizzo has been more valuable at first base while Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado have bested him at the hot corner. Not bad for a guy whose preseason ADP was in the 60s and who was rather bad the first two months of the season.