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Counterpoint: Chris Davis is Right Move at the Right Price

orioles players davis and flaherty high fiving in dugout
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If a baseball team wants to upset a fan base, then all they have to do is spend the offseason sitting on their hands, not making any moves. But if they really want to tick off their fan base then all they have to do is re-sign the best power hitter in baseball…

On Saturday, the Orioles signed Chris Davis, baseball’s home run king two out of the last three years, to a seven-year $161M deal. Heated debates immediately began as to whether or not Davis was worth this amount of money. Nobody (in their right mind) would dispute that Davis makes the Orioles a better baseball team; it’s just a question of allocating resources, and with so many holes on the current roster does it make sense to put so many resources into one player?

[Related: Davis Deal Will Set O’s Back for Years]

Below are my two cents on the Davis deal in the form of three reasons why the signing wasn’t all that bad and in fact could be a really great thing.

 

1. It’s all about the numbers

Can everyone just pause and look at Chris Davis’ stats since 2012? Over the last four seasons he’s hit 159 dongs, an average of just under 40 home runs a year! Last year his WAR was 5.2, which was not even the highest WAR of his career (in 2013 he had a WAR of 6.5). And though hitting the long ball is his best skill, it’s not his only skill. Two of the last three years Davis has led a team that struggles to get on base in on base percentage. I could go on, but suffice to say Davis is one of the best offensive players in all of baseball.

 

2. Okay, so it’s not all about the numbers

Davis is a perfect fit for the Orioles’ needs:

✔ LH power hitter in the middle of heavy RH lineup

✔ Bats in a hitter’s ball park which is conducive to hitting home runs

✔ Can play first base, but in a pinch can also play corner outfielder giving Buck Showalter his much-loved flexibility (speaking of which has anyone seen our left fielder?)

✔ Extra-inning emergency reliever (for all those times when the games goes to the 16th inning and you’ve used up all your relievers and you need someone to come in and pitch two scoreless innings…)

✔ Fan favorite (even the guys whining about the deal are whining while wearing a Crush Davis t-shirt)

✔ Great clubhouse guy, well liked by players and coaches

[Related: A Walk Down Crush Davis Memory Lane]

Now I know on this last point about being a good clubhouse guy, people will scoff as if that’s just a made up platitude that people say about players but that offers no real value to a team. I would argue that there’s a reason the Orioles tend to exceed the yearly projected win totals that computer formulas like to spit out. It’s because some baseball analysts would prefer that all baseball players were little robots, and it’s a matter of putting all the best robots on the same team. However, in Major League Baseball (at least as of right now) we are dealing with human beings, not robots. And human beings tend to perform better in positive environments that contain good leadership and common goals. (There are also a couple anecdotes I could add here about the almost improbable failures of certain teams that all the analysts said were going to be great but because teams do not just consist of robots, they struggled… Looking at you, Red Sox and Nationals.)

 

3. The price is right

I know it’s tough, but you have to get that number $161M out of your head. That number does not reflect the true value of the contract when you take into account deferred money, and it just screams of Scott Boras being able to say he got more than 150M (everybody remember the Max Scherzer deal?). The more important number to remember here is $17M. That’s how much Davis will be making annually for the next six years and more importantly that’s the amount that will be counted in the Orioles payroll for the next six years. 17M would put him just a 1M above Matt Wieters and Adam Jones for the highest paid player on the team. Davis’ deal does not prevent the Orioles from signing a pitcher and/or another bat. Nor does this deal prevent the Orioles from making a run at signing Manny Machado in a few years when he’s up for free agency. If anything this deal proves that Peter Angelos, in the right situation, is willing to spend big money (and let’s face it signing Machado will take big, big money) to keep his own guys.

Is it possible that the deal doesn’t work out? Sure. But all the hyperbole about how the deal is an albatross, and it hamstrings the Orioles to make any other moves, and even with Davis the Orioles won’t have a competitive team next year, is a ridiculous, irrational overreaction.

Whether it’s a moon shot dong or hitting a home run with one hand, Chris Davis has made a career out of doing things that make us shake our heads over and over again by doing the seemingly impossible. And with the signing of Chris Davis the Orioles move one step closer to achieving the ultimate impossibility: a championship.

One Response

  1. Matt,

    I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t understand what the naysayers wanted the Orioles to do? Low ball Davis and watch him get scarfed up by an American league contender? Stand pat? Sign another power hitter who’s numbers and personality may or may not translate into the clubhouse? Sign a pitcher we REALLY can’t afford (Greinke or Price)? Resign a pitcher who takes himself out of games in the 5-6 inning with a one run lead (Chen)?

    Spending that kind of money is the way things go in MLB these days. Everybody talks about Davis’s deferred money, but 10 – 20 years from now that will be worth a fraction of what it is now.

    Davis is the right guy at the right price, playing in the right stadium in front of fans who adore him and is universally liked in the clubhouse.

    Now, they are by no means done. they need to add some pitching and outfield pieces to the 2016 puzzle to make the Birds really competitive.

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One Response

  1. Matt,

    I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t understand what the naysayers wanted the Orioles to do? Low ball Davis and watch him get scarfed up by an American league contender? Stand pat? Sign another power hitter who’s numbers and personality may or may not translate into the clubhouse? Sign a pitcher we REALLY can’t afford (Greinke or Price)? Resign a pitcher who takes himself out of games in the 5-6 inning with a one run lead (Chen)?

    Spending that kind of money is the way things go in MLB these days. Everybody talks about Davis’s deferred money, but 10 – 20 years from now that will be worth a fraction of what it is now.

    Davis is the right guy at the right price, playing in the right stadium in front of fans who adore him and is universally liked in the clubhouse.

    Now, they are by no means done. they need to add some pitching and outfield pieces to the 2016 puzzle to make the Birds really competitive.

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