New York Yankees Sign Ike Davis as Latest First Base Option

The New York Yankees will take another shot at filling their vacancy at first base by going after a familiar face to New York natives. Ike Davis gets a chance to prove the Yankee first base bag isn’t cursed.

After being released earlier Sunday afternoon by the Texas Rangers, Ike Davis has immediately signed on with another team, this time heading to the Bronx to play first base for the New York Yankees.  The details of the deal are not known, other than it is a major-league contract and Davis is expected to join the team in the next few days.

Davis started his career in the Big Apple, playing for the Mets after going 18th overall in the 2008 draft. Early success and a super-two status led to a increasing price tag for the big left-handed hitter, earning him over $3 million dollars in just his third big league season. Having struggled in 2013, the Mets decided early in 2014 that the emergence of Lucas Duda made Davis too expensive to keep around.  They dealt him to the Pirates where he wouldn’t find much more success, before becoming a platoon player last year for the Athletics.

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The Yankees, having lost Greg Bird, Chris Parmelee, Mark Teixeira and Dustin Ackley to an assortment of injuries this season, haven’t been able to keep a first-baseman on the field let alone get any production from the position. They’ll now turn to Davis and Rob Refsnyder to form a platoon as they try to climb out of the bottom of the AL East.

Davis was hitting pretty well for the Rangers’ AAA squad this year, slashing .268/.350/.437 thus far. Always a solid on-base guy, his power hasn’t been the same since an oblique injury in 2013 that he kept from the team.  If, for any reason that is still contributing to his lack of power he should come as a warning sign to young players trying to play through injury. For a player who was once talked about as one of the top young first basemen in the league, his career has been a disappointment so far.

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Still only 29, Davis will look to establish himself in New York before hitting the open market again in 2017.  If he can use the short right-field porch at Yankee Stadium to pump up those power numbers a bit, he might be able to convince a team he can still be a solid contributor going forward.