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Oh, sorry, were you waiting for Chris Davis to come crashing down to earth after his eye-catching start to the 2013 season?
I know I was. After all, this was a hitter who struck out at a 30 percent career rate, and even in his minor 2.0 fWAR breakout season in which he slugged 33 homers, he still made enough outs to have a pedestrian .325 OBP — the massive power was always going to be there, yes, but elite status? That just wasn’t going to be in the cards, not even in his age-27 season.
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The Baltimore Orioles‘ slugger, however, didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
Davis was at it again on Tuesday in the team’s losing effort against the Washington Nationals, hitting a solo shot in the fourth inning against Nathan Karns en route to a 2-for-4 day. His 17th homer further extends his place as the home run king in the league, and extended a hitting streak to seven games. Only two games earlier, he was intentionally walked a whopping three times.
Yes, that’s the type of player the 27-year-old is these days.
And if you think the comparison I’m about to make to a certain triple crown winner is going to sound crazy … well, welcome to crazy land. Here’s what we do know: Davis now has a ludicrous .344/.437/.728 triple-slash. His 2.9 fWAR is tied with that of Miguel Cabrera‘s, and he is show about 10 RBIs shy in terms of counting numbers.
Now, there’s no doubt that Cabrera is the more complete hitter, but consider the following: where the Detroit Tigers MVP makes fewer outs via the K (13.7 percent strikeout rate to 22.3), Davis draws more free passes (13.5 percent walk rate to 11.5) and has been intentionally walked more times. Where Miggy leads the league with a .373 batting average, Davis leads his peers in slugging percentage at .728.
The Orioles star also leads Cabrera in OPS (1.165 to 1.101), wOBA (.477 to .463) and wRC+ (202 to 194), and he’s had 19 fewer plate appearances to generate his power numbers.
If you’re looking for advanced numbers to demonstrate just how Davis is going to regress to his usual numbers, you won’t have too much luck there either. He’s seeing fewer pitches in the zone than ever (career-low 41.1 percent), but has dramatically improved his swinging strike rate (12 percent in 2013, 15.5 in 2012), and is making contact at a 74.7 percent rate, a three-year high.
His BABIP is also at a career-high .381, but the truth is that he’s always been a high BABIP hitter throughout his career (.340), and he’s not hitting very many cheapies (23.7 percent line drives, career-low 1.7 percent infield fly rate, zero percent infield hits).
No, I still don’t think he’ll be a .344 hitter for the rest of the season, but .285? Maybe even pushing .290-plus would not be a totally crazy ROS guess at this point. In short — the dude is zoned in.
And if the season were to end today … are we still so sure that the AL MVP should be going to Cabrera for the second straight season?
