Rajai Davis
I saw the announcement of the Rajai Davis trade and my immediate reaction was WooHoo! Toronto hasn’t had a legitimate stolen base threat since Dave Collins stole 60 in 1984 (still the team record). Yes, we’ve had fast guys, but we have never really had that “uh-oh, that guy is on” guy. I know, you’ll say what about Wells, White, Alomar, Stewart? Wells, for all his speed has never even stolen 20 bases in a season. In Devon White’s 5 seasons in Toronto he had a total of 124 stolen bases (25/year average). Roberto Alomar, probably the most gifted athlete ever to play in Toronto averaged slightly over 40 steals a year and was the closest thing that we ever had to a “money” threat. Shannon Stewart was easily the speediest player we’ve ever had (as an every day starter) but that did not translate to steals. He topped 50 in his first year as a full time player, but then dropped to 37, 20, 27, 14 and 4 in the next five years.
My hope is that Rajai Davis can be that “real” threat! Speed like his can completely disrupt a pitchers rhythm and mechanics. The good ones are game changers. So what do I do? I look at the numbers.
Davis came from the Oakland A’s and what do we know about Oakland since the bash brothers days? One, they are fundamentally sound. They play exceptional defence, they play ‘small ball’ better than anyone in the American League (Mauer and Morneau no longer have the Twins as the ‘small ball’ winners) and they cultivate winners out of average players. The finished .500 in 2010, .466 in ’09, .466 in ’08, .469 in ’07, .574 in ’06, .543 in ’05, .562 on ’04....never more than 5 games back of .500, a couple of playoff appearances and a payroll in the bottom third. They draft well and trade better.
So we know that Davis is from a good quality organization where he had 50 stolen bases last year. Not Rickey Henderson (or Dave Collins) but in this era of baseball where managers are absolutely terrified to put runners in motion and give up an out – this is a massive number. Only two players in baseball had more steals than Davis last year; Juan Pierre in Chicago (68) and Michael Bourn in Houston (52). For the sake of argument, I’m going to consider them to be Davis’ peer group.
Michael Bourn
Last year Juan Pierre was safely at 1st base ((hits+walks+hit by pitch)-(doubles+triples+homeruns)) a total of 223 times. Of those times he successfully stole 30.5% of the time. Michael Bourn’s average was 30.4 and Davis’ was 35.9%. Theoretically, 1 out of every 3 times he’s standing at 1st base he’s going to successfully steal 2nd.
Juan Pierre
A couple of points about this ‘made at home calculation’. It doesn’t account for the number of times that a player was a 1st with runners ahead of him; neither does it consider the game situation. Also, it doesn’t assume that a runner could steal 3rd base. As a point of comparison, when Ricky Henderson stole 130 bases in 1982 his average would have been 58.3. So while I don’t pretend this is definitive, I think it’s a reasonable bench mark.
Rickey being Rickey
From a percentage basis, Davis ranks ahead of his peer group in steals. He’s is also better than the other two in his success rate. Davis is at 82%$, Bourn 81% and Pierre 79%. Add to that, the fact that he can hit and you’ve really got something! In the last two years he’s hit .305 and .284 for Oakland. Before you say, “big deal”, either of those averages would have led the Blue Jays in hitting last year.
Now the A’s are not a club that gives away all-stars or hall of famers, (not that he’s either) so there has to be a downside. As I see it (numerically) there are two. The first is that his on base percentage is just slightly better than his batting average. The guy simply doesn’t walk. That alone is enough to fall out of favour in Oakland where the GM (Billy Beane) over values things that won’t cost you in salary, like walks. So if the Jays are thinking of Davis as a lead-off man, it seems like a bad fit. Just to compare, he walks about HALF as much as Devon White did! And I’m sure you’ll remember the complaints about White being a poor choice to lead off because his on base average wasn’t good.
The second issue, and this is potentially disastrous, is Davis’ record last year against the American League East. Perhaps it’s an anomaly, but please consider that his .284 batting average last year was actually 21st best in the entire league! You would think that someone in the top 25 would have a measure of consistency overall, but his stats against the AL East are simply dreadful. Versus Baltimore he hit a Gwyneth Paltry .211, and that was the best! Against Tampa he hit .182, Boston .139 and New York a brutal .115.
Ouch.
Next year roughly 40% of his at bats for the entire season will be against those 4 clubs. If an inability to hit against the pitching in the East is real, it could be very very ugly.
However, I’m going to sit back and hope it’s a blip.
Based on the Roster the way it currently stands, opening day looks like this:
1. Yunel Escobar, SS
2. Aaron Hill, 2B
3. Adam Lind, 1B
4. Jose Bautista, 3B
5. Vernon Wells, CF
6. Travis Snider, DH
7. Fred Lewis, LF
8. J.P. Arencibia, C
9. Rajai Davis, RF
At this point, the Blue Jays wish list has to include another outfielder, DH or 1st baseman. An outfielder would replace Lewis, a DH would bump Snider back to the outfield taking out Lewis and a 1st baseman would made Lind to DH, Snider to the outfield and Lewis to the bench.
There is at least one more move to consider next year’s roster an upgrade over 2010. Of course, pitchers are ALWAYS in need, but as far as positional players go, I think Jason Giambi solves a lot of problems and the price would probably be right.
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