I’ve often told the story on this here blog about watching the 2012 Orioles with my pop, back when Chris Davis was still just “Chris” and we O’s fans were just starting to see flashes of the guy who we’d soon come to know as “Crush.” Whenever Davis was up, we’d look at the TV – or down at him in the batter’s box if we were lucky enough to be at the Yard – Dad and I would be mumbling – to ourselves as much as to each other – some version of “please just put the ball in play.” Because, of course, whenever Davis did that, good things seemed to happen.
Buck Showalter has famously referred to this as Davis’ “contact to damage ratio.” It’s off the charts. Big Dude hit ball, ball go far.
Of course, Davis doesn’t always put the ball in play. In fact, he does it far less than most of us would like him to. That’s where we’ve learned to take the bad with the good with Davis, knowing that, when he finally does make some good contact, it will be worth the wait, and worth all those frustrations of watching him swing through pitches with ducks on the pond.
So why am I bringing this up right now? As it so happened, an article on Camden Chat today caught my eye, which brought the “please put it in play” pleas to the front of my mind.
In the article, scandalously titled “Adam Jones has Better Plate Discipline than Chris Davis,” Matt Perez (@fanoflaundry) makes the case that Davis, though he walks about twice as much as Jones, actually has the worse plate discipline of the two Birds sluggers.
If you’re familiar with the Depot, you know that it’s not some platform for hot takes – numbers abound, enough numbers to make many casual fans’ eyes glaze over. (Perhaps “casual fans” isn’t the correct description – let’s go with “fans of baseball card stats rather than sabermetrics.”)
Perez sums it up like this:
“In reality….Chris Davis’ plate discipline is about as good as Jonathan Schoop’s and only slightly better than Jimmy Paredes’.”
Yikes.
Perez goes on…
This poor plate discipline shows why it’s so hard for Chris Davis to be successful. My metric measuring plate discipline suggests that he’s typically in the bottom 2% in this regard (5th percentile in 2014). He’s able to thrive because in 2013 and 2015, he was in the 99th percentile of wOBA for pitches hit into play. He was elite in those years because he was able to kill the ball whenever he hit it. In 2014, he was in the 86th percentile in wOBA for pitches hit into play. As soon he drops from elite to very good in wOBA for pitches put into play, he becomes an average hitter.
I’ve read this article twice now, and I have to admit that I’m still having a bit of trouble with it. Perhaps that has more to do with my definition of “plate discipline” than with anything Matt presented, but my main takeaway is this: I need to not only keep begging Crush to put the ball in play, but I need to keep hoping that, when he does so, these amazing things continue to happen.
Because it sounds like, from this analysis, that once he either starts to put fewer balls into play, OR stops murdering most every ball he DOES put into play, bad bad things will be afoot.
It’s an interesting article, and I’d suggest those SABR-inclined of you to take a look and let me know what you think. I’ll be over here rehearsing my mumbling mantra for the upcoming season.
“Please just put it in play (and with authority), please just put it in play (and with authority)….
