Chris Davis’ 2013 season was one of the most phenomenal displays of sheer power in recent memory. Seemingly every night, he crushed at least one home run. He hit them to left, center and right, and he hit them in bunches.
He finished the season with 53 home runs, 138 RBI and 370 total bases, all three of which led all of Major League Baseball. That year, he showed that he possessed tremendous power to all fields and that he had one of the most powerful swings in baseball.
However, he left much to be desired in his encore performance. For whatever reason – maybe he was pitched around a little more and didn’t know how to adjust, or 2013 was a fluke – he struggled mightily in 2014. Davis ended the year with a batting average below to Mendoza Line and, while he did connect on 26 round-trippers, his overall hitting was below league-average, according to FanGraphs’ wRC+ measurement.
But this year, he has had a major resurgence. Coming into Friday’s game, he was fourth in the league in home runs with 31, and only two RBIs behind Josh Donaldson for the MLB lead in that category. In other words, he has not been quite as awesome as he was in 2013 – at this point then, Davis already had 45 homers – but he has been pretty darn good.
And if he wouldn’t have had the egregious misfortune of getting robbed of a home run twice in the same weekend back in July, his numbers would look even more sterling.
"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 told Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun. "I think I was trying to protect [the oblique] and subconsciously there was a little uncertainty about letting it go. Really right around the All-Star break, I felt like I had a few at-bats where it just kind of clicked for me and I'm taking that swing that I was looking for. I'm getting that swing on a day-to-day basis."
Davis’ resurgence has not only helped the Baltimore Orioles – who are only 2.5 games out of a wild card slot – but it has also drastically improved his value on the free agent market, which he is eligible for after this year.
The upcoming free agent class is incredibly slim when it comes to power hitters – Mike Napoli is projected to be the most potent bat after Davis – and Davis should be due for a huge pay day, possibly in the $100 million range according to Mike Petriello of MLB.com.
However, Davis is not the type of person to look into the future, and he made that clear when asked about his free agent potential.
"That's just the way it's going to be," Davis said, via Encina. "I think it's selfish to sit here and talk about my future with this team when we have such a bright future for the next couple of months and I want my focus to be on the field and everybody's focus to be on the field."
As far as his on-field play, many of his advanced stats this year look similar to his 2013 campaign, while some are even better.
For example, his groundball to flyball ratio is 0.71, the exact same ratio as 2013. Davis is hitting considerably more line drives this year and both his groundball and fly ball percentages are down, according to FanGraphs.
He is pulling the ball way more than he did in 2013, and he is also making more hard and medium contact, per FanGraphs’ batted ball tracker. But his fly ball to home run ratio is worse, which is why his home run total is not as high as it was in 2013.
"Chris is always a swing away from something good happening," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said, per Encina. "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.”
It is worth mentioning that Davis’ pull percentage has increased by about five percent every year since 2013, and that is something that Showalter says can get the slugger in trouble.
"He has power all over the ballpark. It just doesn't have to be pull power,” Showalter continued. “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. … [During batting practice,] he won't leave the box until he hits some home runs [the other way]. That's the only thing really. I think he's realized how much better a hitter he can be when he's not so pull-conscious."
Sure enough, when you look at Davis’ spray charts from 2013 and 2015, it is obvious that he hit way more home runs to center field and left field (opposite field) then than he has so far this year.
But other than his propensity to pull the baseball a little more often than he should, Davis is back to being an incredibly powerful MLB hitter. He is still striking out a lot and not really walking much, but like Showalter says, when he hits the ball on the barrel, it usually goes a long way.
How far does he actually hit it? He is currently second in all of baseball with an average batted ball distance of 320 feet, per Baseball Savant.
He might not have returned to the monster that he was in 2013 when his play engendered the nickname ‘Crush Davis’, but he is getting there. And other teams are undoubtedly taking notice, and a few of them are assuredly going to be ready to open their pocket books once the offseason rolls around.
So while Davis is content to focus on the task at hand, which is to get his Orioles into the playoffs, it doesn’t hurt for him to know that his talents will be very generously compensated in a few months.