Chris Davis, 2018
You can never tell a tragedy too many times. Such stories are timeless, with each recounting holding as much meaning as the one before it; a repetitive exercise in morality, empathy, and humanity. It’s the dramatic irony that keeps us coming back for more. Nothing is more enthralling than watching a high-stakes game in which you know the outcome while the players don’t.
And that’s what makes the story of one Baltimore Orioles first baseman so grotesquely fascinating.
In this tragedy (one that I’m certain you’re familiar with), our hero is Chris Davis, our setting the 2018 season. For this fateful year, he indeed suffered the slings, the arrows, and a great deal more of outrageous baseball fortune.
Some Context
Davis entered 2018 coming off of his worst full year with the Orioles. He finished 2017 with a .312 wOBA, 91 wRC+, and 0.0 fWAR. (Which, if nothing else, was at least visually appealing.) These, of course, are not quite the numbers a team wants to see out of their 6-foot-3-inch lumberjack first baseman whose primary job is to hit a lot of baseballs very far.
Yet for his poor performance, Baltimore’s $161 million man still seemed to have his brute strength in tow. Though his strikeout rate ballooned to a concerning 37.2%, his batted ball profile remained impressive.
His average exit velocity (90.1 mph), barrel rate (12.8%), and hard-hit rate (45.6%) all ranked in the 90th percentile or higher among 256 qualified batters. Davis’ .451 xSLG and .497 xwOBACON told the story of a player with plenty of raw power still to spare struggling with plate discipline. For all intents and purposes, he seemed well on his way to becoming, if nothing else, a mediocre power hitter for the remainder of his career.
Then Davis skipped the whole “mediocre” thing, went straight to being terrible, and through a combination of factors in and out of his control, produced perhaps the worst season in MLB history.
Things Could Be Going Better
The above graph is a plot of all qualified seasons by first basemen from 1901 to 2019 (the last full season of baseball), and in total, there are 2,049 campaigns charted out for you to enjoy. Nearly 50% of them fall between 2.0 and 5.0 fWAR, and more than 92% of them have a non-zero, positive value.
But do you see that tiny line on the far right? The one that looks like that annoying little thread hanging off the cuff of an old t-shirt?
That’s our man. Chris Davis’ lovely 2018. -3.2 fWAR.
The worst qualified season for a first baseman ever.
Simply put, there were no redeeming qualities to be found in Chris Davis in 2018. The power that defined his game disappeared, and he posted a paltry .128 ISO, the lowest mark for a full season in his career. His .239 wOBA only reiterated his offensive inadequacy.
On the basepaths, he was worth -1.8 BsR, and his -11 DRS and -1.7 UZR suggest that he wasn’t bringing much to the table with the leather either.
Davis’ .168 batting average (terrible stat, here’s a good explanation why) was the worst for any qualified season ever, regardless of position. He started the year in a 5-for-45 rut, and he ended it with 44 wRC+, 192 strikeouts (good for an improved 36.8% K%!), and the dubious distinction of the worst single-season performance by any batsman possibly ever.
Empathy Makes This Worse
I must admit that looking over Davis’ Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs, and Baseball Savant pages is disheartening work. This is not just because of how terrible 2018 was and how terrible he’s been since. It’s because I have to look at it all in the context of what he once was and what he could have been. I have to look at what he accomplished up to 2018 knowing the silent horror that awaited him the following year. However, like a terrible car crash, I find it impossible to pull my attention away.
Davis was not some average joe baseball guy who just happened to be really not good one year. He was a Texas Rangers castoff turned legitimate power threat who breathed life into the heart of the Baltimore Orioles’s offense in the mid-2010s. He (alongside Manny Machado and Adam Jones) was the team’s big-ticket item right up through the end of 2017. After that, it collapsed all at once, and I simply can’t help but pity him.
Reference tells the story of a former All-Star and AL MVP finalist whose career is in the process of sinking into the abyss of the atrocious. FanGraphs speaks of a standout whose value was once great and is now fleeting. But perhaps most sinister of all, Savant reminds me that even at his lowest point, Davis was shown no mercy.
In fact, he was treated as a sinner in the hands of angry Baseball Gods.
Baseball Is Suffering
Davis finished the 2018 campaign with an xSLG of .363, which ranked in just the 16th percentile among 249 batters. His .191 xBA was the worst in baseball. By all accounts, this clearly was not his year.
Yet still, baseball rubbed salt in his fresh, gaping wounds.
His SLG-xSLG of -.067 was the 11th-highest negative difference in baseball. His -.023 BA-xBA ranked 24th-highest. Even as a scavenger, luck gave Davis the cold shoulder.
An oft-overlooked point that made Davis’ 2018 season most interesting was not his abysmal play, but manager Buck Showalter’s desire to make it the focal point of the Orioles’ season. Through a combination of stubbornness and faith, he played Davis in 128 games. He let Davis hold a bat in his hands 522 times. He stuck Davis at first base for 1,010 innings. If Davis was the band on the Titanic, then Showalter was the boat’s captain.
He made Davis suffer in front of countless fans for a full year, cementing his unenviable spot in baseball’s history.
And now here you and I are, reminiscing about that utterly depressing season two years removed from its merciful conclusion.
I find the whole ordeal fascinating. For all of the statistics and records of that campaign, there’s something intangibly human about Chris Davis’ 2018. Something about his absurd struggle against an elusive enemy in an otherwise arbitrary setting seems at least somewhat relatable in the context of the human spirit and the faceless foe of life.
It’s this that makes us sympathetic to our tragic hero. As the struggle raged on, he remained resilient. Through 2018, the offseason, and into 2019, Davis’ spirit was not broken.
Even in the face of an appalling, record-breaking 0-for-54 hitless streak that he carried into the new season, Davis remained determined to find his path again. And on April 13, 2019, he was rewarded for his perseverance. An RBI-single off of Boston Red Sox pitcher Rick Porcello gave him his first hit of the season in what would end up being a 3-hit performance, finally putting the streak to bed. The baseball world, in a moment of compassion and unity, cheered his triumph.
With the pressure relieved and bright times surely ahead, Davis went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts the very next day.
