Baltimore Orioles Chris Davis headlines 2018 performances that won’t repeat
While the season that the Baltimore Orioles slugger was historically bad, he headlines a group that should not be expected to repeat their 2018 performance in 2019.
Every year, there are players who truly break out and become superstars. Max Scherzer, for example. spent parts of five seasons as little more than a league-average pitcher before his breakout 2013 season, and since then, he has been arguably the best pitcher in baseball. Conversely, there are plenty of players who have single seasons that are complete anomalies. One of the most famous examples is former Baltimore Orioles outfielder Brady Anderson, who hit 50 home runs in 1996, and he never hit more than half of that in any season of his 15-year career. Clearly, there are players in 2018 who will not be nearly the same player in 2019.
Improving to an MVP
One example is the reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts. Now, before the pitchforks come, it’s obvious that Mookie Betts was a fantastic player both before and during 2018. But Betts took it to an absolutely different level offensively in 2018 that will be extremely difficult to repeat.
From his debut in 2014 to 2017, Betts was good for an OPS+ of 120, meaning he was 20 percent better than average based on park-adjusted OPS. In 2018, Betts posted a 186 OPS+, only trailing Mike Trout‘s 199 mark among qualified hitters.
A huge part of Betts’s 2019 success was due to his .368 batting average on balls in play compared to a .314 career mark, which is a stat that can often fluctuate due to luck. Granted, Betts is only 26, and his 2018 could mark a real change in Betts’s batting ability.
He provides incredible value on defense and on the basepaths and he could very likely end up in Cooperstown after his career. But even if he has significantly improved as a hitter, nothing in his career before 2018 suggests he’s a Trout-level hitter, and there is a great probability that his MVP-season was a career-year, even if he remains a very good hitter.
Over-shooting the mountains
Kyle Freeland was a feel-good story for the 2018 Colorado Rockies. He was born in Denver and was even photographed as a baby in Rockies’ gear. In his rookie year in 2017, Freeland was fine, posting a 4.10 ERA in notoriously hitters friendly Coors Field. But in 2018, he brought it to a completely different level, tossing over 200 innings with a 2.85 ERA, the best mark for a qualified Rockies’ starter in their franchise history.
His magnum opus was in the NL Wild Card Game, where he pitched 6.2 scoreless innings on short rest. Freeland finished fourth in the NL Cy Young voting, and he will undoubtedly be slotted in as the Opening Day starter for the 2019 Rockies.
However, there is some reason to believe that Freeland will not be the pitcher going forward that he was in 2018. One reason for concern about Freeland’s 2018 season is his 20.5 strikeout percentage, below the league average for starters of 22.3. His success was largely due to his ability to limit hard contact, which may be hard for Freeland to sustain in 2019 and beyond.
He very well may remain a good pitcher for the Rockies, but his true status as an ace may not be backed up by his future performance.
Davis dumps
Chris Davis was almost incomprehensibly bad in 2018. He posted a -3.1 Fangraphs WAR, tied with 1997 Jose Guillen for the worst mark for a qualified hitter since World War II.
Needless to say, the Baltimore Orioles expected a much different performance when they signed him to a $161 million contract before the 2016 season. Expectations were lowered after his poor 2017 season, but nobody could possibly predict the historically horrible season that Davis had in 2018.
One of the reasons that Davis was able to qualify as a hitter was because, like Davis, the Orioles were historically awful in 2018, losing 115 games and having the ability to let Davis try to play through his struggles at the plate. The 2019 Orioles might improve somewhat in 2019, but it is extremely unlikely that they are actually able to compete, especially in the powerhouse AL East, meaning they can afford to keep playing Davis and hope he will improve.
Davis is only 32, and he’s only three years removed from being a truly elite hitter. There’s a chance that Chris Davis is never a great player again, or for that matter, a good player. But there’s also a huge chance that Davis is not the worst player ever, which is what he looked like in 2018. Look for him to improve significantly in 2019, even if he still isn’t that good.
Next. Christmas list for each AL East team. dark
What do you think? Would you put the Baltimore Orioles slugger as a definite bounceback