Khris Davis: Kind of Like Chris Davis

The Milwaukee Brewers’ outfield is home to a pair of highly sought outfielders in fantasy baseball leagues. Khris Davis, after a .279/.353/.596 showing in 153 plate appearances in 2013, was the clear favorite to hold down the third spot coming into the 2014 campaign. He was a pretty popular sleeper (among outfielders, ADP: 46^th, RotoGraphs consensus rank: 43^rd) as well.

For the most part, he didn’t disappoint. Davis finished 40^th among outfielders in money earned thanks to his .244/.299/.457 slash line, with 22 home runs and four stolen bases, in 549 PAs. Fantasy owners, especially those in OBP leagues who probably took a bit of a loss, might have hoped for a little more, but the left fielder’s traditional rotisserie production was a clear win, even if it wasn’t much of one.

Questions about the future might include those regarding whether Davis’ production will get much better and whether he’ll hold down a regular lineup spot. As a big leaguer, he hasn’t walked at anywhere near the rate at which he did in the minors from his time at Class A Advanced Brevard County on (12.2%). He also hit .288 on the farm, but his lack of patience appears to put his MLB average and, thus, playing time at risk. He ceded some PAs, especially when he struggled in September, after the Brew Crew had acquired Gerardo Parra from the Arizona Diamondbacks at the non-waiver trade deadline.

Davis began this past campaign looking like a major bust, in fact. Through May 10 (134 PAs) he had a .217/.239/.388 slash line and walked just once. Correct: One time. He enjoyed a surge that coincided with his willingness to take four balls and basically lasted for a few months, however. From May 11 through Aug. 26, his slash line was .270/.340/.523, with 16 of his 22 bombs and an 8.6% walk rate, in 338 PAs. He cooled to close out the season, unfortunately, batting .181/.221/.306, with only two walks, in 77 PAs. It’s possible that a couple of mild injuries, beginning in early August, affected his output, but he never missed more than a couple of games because of them.

Based on the limited sample of Davis data – selection bias, granted – there was a clear correlation between his relative patience and performance.

Dates	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
3/31 – 5/10	35.3%	68.2%	52.1%	53.6%	75.2%	68.0%	51.0%	60.5%	16.3%
5/11 – 8/26	29.3%	76.3%	50.1%	53.6%	84.1%	74.2%	44.4%	54.4%	12.6%
8/27 – 9/26	31.9%	78.7%	53.6%	46.7%	82.3%	70.9%	46.4%	63.6%	15.4%

Davis is obviously an aggressive hitter, and pitchers have an evident incentive to attempt to exploit that trait. Reach rate isn’t a problem. Contact is the problem: Davis swung at more than 50% of the pitches he saw for a top-25 rate among qualifiers, but he made contact on only 72.2% of them, a rate that tied him for second-worst among those in the top 25 of swing percentage. That’s not typically a winning formula. Jose Abreu, Marlon Byrd, and Davis’ teammate Carlos Gomez made it work, but it’s a circuitous path to success.

Fantasy owners would probably like to send Davis a memo. As Scott Spratt wrote at the beginning of May, though, taking pitches basically contradicts the team philosophy on hitting, so it’s doubtful that the plea would receive much reinforcement from the staff. Fantasy owners are used to the pitfalls of aggressive power hitters, of course, but this slugger’s minor league walk rates had teased them.

Gomez, Byrd, Chris Johnson, Dayan Viciedo – these players don’t walk often. Abreu, with his 8.2% walk rate in his MLB debut, might prove to be an exception. We’ll see. Regardless, a spiking walk rate doesn’t appear to be in Davis’ future. He’ll probably need an unusually high average on balls in play in order to be an OBP asset. The changeup created obvious issues for him. It’s a little surprising that he didn’t strike out more often.

Thankfully, Davis has yet to demonstrate much handedness bias in terms of his walk and strikeout rates – and, really, results across the board. That’s basically the story from his minor league days as well. Unfortunately, his aggressiveness in The Show has put him in a different bucket, so it’s his results against either hand that are in peril at times. Milwaukee’s organization devalues OBP and thus seems disinclined to use this RHB’s category of weakness versus RHPs against him for the sake of the power he promises. Another prolonged slump is bad, but the Brew Crew’s tradeoff bodes better for his PT prospects than the average potential platoon situation might.

A big reason that Davis is a dangerous hitter is his ability to go oppo. That’s a pretty spray chart for line drives and fly balls. It shouldn’t be surprising that his outcomes are similar, no matter the handedness. His ISO and batted-ball data for right field help to confirm that he’s going the other way with authority. That’s the kind of thing the Chris Chris Davis does – except that he also crushes to center. Hope that’s part of the package for the Khris Khris Davis? I like the oppo-power trait as one to increase the likelihood that he does “hit the BABIP jackpot” in a particular year, at least.

PT, at least in 2015, appears to be almost entirely up to Davis. The Brewers like his type of bat, which promises power but not OBP, and they don’t seem to care as much about defense. Gerardo Parra is a plus defender, of course, and, in what’ll be his age-28 campaign, will be the one true threat to Davis’ PAs. Parra enters his final year of arbitration, and it’s not clear whether Milwaukee is interested in committing to him beyond that. The onus is simply on Davis. For reasons cited, Steamer’s 2015 projection of 439 PAs may be light. But that number – or lesser – is entirely plausible. Parra’s projection sits at 367. Still, there’s Ryan Braun’s propensity to miss time. Gomez used to do that, too.

Davis delivered in 2014, but his stock really shouldn’t increase. In some ways, he’s a little riskier than he was this past season. It seems unlikely that he’ll be a plus, and even likely that he’s a minus, in AVG as well as OBP in most years. The threat of a BABIP spike does lurk, though. The power is tasty, too, and there’s not much danger of that going away soon. His clout the other way and other supporting elements could even mean that Steamer’s projected .198 ISO a little low. But that’s still pretty good. We have a better idea of the type of hitter the Khris Khris Davis is, but it turns out that he’s the type of hitter who’s a little more difficult to price.