Baltimore Orioles Chris Davis: Extreme Statistics

Aug 6, 2014; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis reacts after striking out in the fifth inning against Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

It does not take a lot of baseball statistical knowledge to know that Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis is going to be one of the those players on the statistical fringes—good and bad. He is a recent example in a long line of power hitters over the years who hit for a lot of power, but also strike out at alarming rates.

Willie Stargell hit 475 home runs, but struck out once every 4.1 at-bats for a total of 1,936 over his career.

Jose Canseco struck out six more times in his career than did Stargell, fanning once every 3.6 at-bats.

Mr. October – Reggie Jackson – hit 563 homes runs, but he also has the most strikeouts in baseball history at 2,597. His strikeout rate was once every 3.8 at-bats.

Mark Reynolds is the statistically top strikeout batter ever in terms of frequency, doing so once every 2.7 at-bats. As we’ve written here on The Baltimore Wire before, Reynolds is the only daily sort of player to ever have a higher strikeout number than his batting average – in 2010, with 221 strikeouts and an average of .198.

Striking out once every 2.6 at-bats is rare air.

So you can see that Chris Davis was in rare air this 2014 season. With an average of .196 and 173 strikeouts before the suspension, his Adderall issue may well have saved him from the same ignominious distinction as Mark Reynolds. His strikeouts this year average to one whiff every 2.6 at-bats.

This takes talent. No, seriously, it does! It takes a lot of upside counter-balance to be able to justify those numbers. We’re talking about what Showalter calls “damage to contact ratio.”

Going into a great deal of detail on this topic is an interesting article on Fangraphs by Tony Blengino. Noting Davis’ unusual mix of extreme statistics, he writes this great line in his summary near the end,

"“The words ‘unnatural’ and ‘outlier’ seemingly come up again and again with regard to Davis.”"

Blengino relates some good features about Chris Davis – that he hits fly balls at a high rate without popping out terribly much, and some of those fly balls simply land on the other side of the fence.

But even while hitting a lot of line drives and hard ground balls, they don’t produce as much as would be hoped – certainly due to the over-shift defenses. Blengino says,

"“Davis is 12-for-28 (.429) on line drives and 2-for-65 (.031) on grounders hit to the right-field sector in 2014, both dramatically below MLB norms. It doesn’t matter how hard you hit the ball if a bunch of guys are standing where they know it’s going to be hit.”"

Exactly, and this begs the question that many have asked and the opinion that many have rendered – that Chris Davis is going to need to hit against the shift to have truly significant success again.