Spectrum Thinking with James Loney and Ike Davis

I currently work in education and one of the subjects I used to teach was fifth-grade social studies. Something I would work on with my students is spectrum thinking. The idea behind this is that there are multiple perspectives when it comes to historical events. Instead of simply telling my students an event from one singular perspective, I tried to provide for them the multiple perspectives in the hopes they could draw their own conclusions about why certain events occurred and which positions were more justified. Admittedly, this was not always effective with all my fifth-graders as some of my students were not developmentally ready for this type of critical thinking. I imagine this would be more effective at a high school level.

The point of bringing this up is not to reminisce about my days as a teacher. In history, things are rarely black or white: there is a lot of gray. When evaluating players, the same can be true. Even when we are right about our predictions, this doesn’t mean that the prediction had an absolute certainty of happening or not happening. There are probabilities for certain things happening and nobody is 100% correct when making their pre-evaluations. I imagine this is not a new concept to those reading this. And even if it is, hopefully you will learn something new from this perspective.

Today, I am going to look at two first basemen who may become relevant depending on how deep your league is. It would be easy for me to dismiss their recent performances, which would make the point of this article pretty useless. I am going to attempt to go through some spectrum thinking by looking at the highs and lows of both hitters. More likely than not, I won’t be able to make any concrete conclusions, but you will hopefully be able to gain some additional perspectives on what values these players could potentially provide.

The aforementioned players are James Loney and Ike Davis. Interestingly, both players are in New York now and on May 20^th were playing against each other in AAA. Oh, and as of Wednesday (when I wrote this article) both players had identical OPS’ at .748. (Credit Joel Sherman for pointing this out here). Yet, both players could not have gotten to that same OPS any differently. Loney relies on a high batting average by putting the ball in play without much power. Davis, on the other hand, has a lower batting average with a high K%, but also walks more and hits for more power. Here are the players’ career numbers:

Loney is older and started his big league career a year younger, so he has accrued more PA’s resulting in more wRC, which would be expected. Looking at wRC+, however, Davis has the slight edge. I included WAR because it is important to look at, but for the purposes of fantasy analysis, I will be speaking more about wRC and wRC+ in terms of comprehensive analysis.

Now with spectrum thinking, you need to look at the black and white for each player to start. For players, this means their best and worst season. I’ve ignored this season because the sample sizes are so small, especially in Ike Davis’ case. Let’s start by looking at the best season for each:

I chose these seasons both somewhat objectively and somewhat subjectively. I wanted to choose a season with the highest wRC+, but also had a significant sample size. For example, Ike Davis’ 2011 was his best season according to wRC+, but he also played only 36 games before he suffered a season-ending ankle injury. Who knows if he would’ve sustained those numbers for the whole season. His next best season was 2010 when he was 23 years old and had 601 PAs. Loney was somewhat less tricky because his 2007 season was definitely his best according to wRC+, and the 375 PAs is significant enough for our purposes to call it his best season. There were other seasons where he accrued more wRCs, but his rate stats were not particularly impressive.

So what does the best seasons say about these players? One thing that stands out is that these seasons seem like ages ago. Even though this wasn’t Loney’s first year in the pros, it was his first official rookie season. So both players’ best season came as rookies. This was Loney’s only season to bat over .300, and he exhibited power that was matched only by his previous season where he had an ISO of .275 in 111 PAs. The .919 OPS was also a career best. It appeared he was going to be a potential superstar at first base. He also hit the most HRs of his career in a season. His Hard% (36.2), BABIP (.350) and HR/FB (13.9%) turned out to be career highs. The K% and BB% are pretty in line with career norms, so it doesn’t seem his approach changed too much. During this season, he was just making great contact. Hitting the ball hard consistently will do that to your performance. I can only guess why he hasn’t touched those numbers since, especially after I looked at some heat maps and nothing really stood out. He liked the ball high and inside, but pitchers pitched him low and away for 2007 and his career. Either way (now for the obvious statement), when Loney is hitting the ball hard, he is a very good hitter.

Davis’ career year was a little more recent, but seems like decades ago (especially for Met fans). He hit the most doubles in his career and had his second-best OPS (.791), behind his 2011 season (.926). Similar to Loney, his BB% and K% were very in line with his career numbers. His .176 is identical to his career .176 ISO as well, which is nice, but not earth-shattering. What seems to help drive this season is his .321 BABIP, which is also his second-best number. Unlike Loney, Davis didn’t necessarily fall off a cliff as early. I will discuss that more later on, but do note that one could argue that his 2012 season was his best season. Here is the line:

The batting average and walk rate drop, but the power took a pretty significant jump from 2010, and the wRC and wRC+ are not far off from 2010. Why mention this? Davis had a longer period of being in the top of his spectrum. From 2010-2012, Davis’ triple-slash was .252/.336/.461 with a wRC+ of 118. For Loney, I used 2006-2007 for his top spectrum, where he triple-slashed .321/.372/.543 with a wRC+ of 134. Loney had a better peak and in terms of spectrum thinking, Loney’s best performance is seemingly more desirable than Davis.

Now it’s time to look at the other end of the spectrum, which are their struggles. Once again, Loney has a pretty clear worst season, whereas Davis has two seasons where this is the case. For Loney, it is very clearly 2012 where he had a wRC+ of 69. For Davis, it is between his 2013 with the Mets or his 2015 with Oakland. He had less PAs in 2015, but I chose that because it was more recent and his wRC+ was at it’s lowest. Here is what those seasons looked like:

Usually, the age-28 season is a pretty significant year for players and for both these players, it was their worst. Loney had his worst batting average, OBP, and slugging. His BB% was below his career average, but not his worst and his K% was better than his career average. The only number that once again stuck out was his .269 BABIP, which is the worst of his career. When I started with this approach, I expected to see differences in approaches at the plate a little more. Instead, I am seeing more results based differences. In 2012, his Soft% was 20%, where he 16.6% for his career. Again (here comes another obvious statement), Loney is at his worst when he is not hitting the ball hard. Wow, some analysis there.

Ike Davis’ worst season is not as clear cut, as mentioned above. His batting average and slugging were not at their worst, nor was his K%. The two areas Davis really saw drops were his BB%, which was under 10% for the only time in his career in a full-season, and his ISO that was a career low of .121. Something I noticed that popped out to me were the results of his batted balls. For his career, Davis pulls the ball 37.9% of the time and has a 1.14 GB/FB rate. In 2015, he pulled the ball only 29.1% of the time by increasing his center batted balls to over 44% (career 37.5%). His GB/FB was also a career high of 1.88. I get that pulling the ball a lot is not necessarily a recipe for success since a high pull rate may be more indicative on pulling outside pitches on the ground. For Davis, pulling the ball is important for home run power as most of his HRs have come as a result of him pulling the ball, as shown in the chart below:

Source: FanGraphs

That is important for Davis in terms of being a “good fit” in Yankee Stadium, as his former tendency to pull more flyballs could become quite the asset there. These two acquisitions are about environmental fits, but before I focus on that, let’s look at the rest of the spectrum of these two hitters.

Both hitters have had seasons of being above average and below average according to wRC+, with no real exceptions outside of the two seasons mentioned above for each. Both hitters can be average, with Davis showing more home run pop and a willingness to walk as well as strike out more. Loney tries to maintain a high average and gains most of his power numbers from doubles as opposed to line drives. The Mets and Yankees would certainly be happy to take the “gray” years of these players as replacements. Additionally, both players seem to really fit their parks well.

Ike Davis hit more groundballs in Oakland, but if he gets those flyballs back in Yankee Stadium, he can be an excellent fit for a team that has lacked 1B production this season. His ability to walk over ten percent of the time is also a positive asset for them. Loney, on the other hand, appears to be a strong fit for a Mets team with excellent power, but has struggled stringing along base hits with runners in scoring position. Loney won’t hit a slew of home runs in Citi Field, but can find some gaps with those line drives and groundballs in the more expansive outfield, which can lead to those obvious positive outcomes. Loney’s approach is what it is at the plate and the Mets seem fine with that in the hopes he can hit the ball hard like he has been able to do in the past.

These moves were lightning in bottle moves where both teams are probably thinking Loney and Davis won’t set the world on fire, but it is not out of the question for them to get hot and provide excellent production at 1B. I don’t expect to see top tier nor bottom tier production from each. Looking in the middle, these are both average 1B who can benefit these real baseball teams, as well as your fantasy teams depending on how deep you go. In a 10-team, you should be able to find better than this. Beyond a 12-team mixed, however, you may also find lightning in a bottle. The way first basemen have been performing this season, Loney and Davis may be worth the shot.