Baltimore Orioles: Chris Davis wants to give it one more shot

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From big bopper to big slumper, Baltimore Orioles 1B Chris Davis considered retiring this off-season. But he’s bent on giving it just one more chance.

For 210 days from September 14, 2018, through April 13, 2019, Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis lived without a single safe hit on his jacket. Already struggling to come to terms with his jolting power drop, Davis and Oriole fans were reminded cruelly that baseball is played by human men who aren’t supermen no matter how high their achievements.

A batter is the second loneliest man on a baseball field next to the pitcher on the mound against whom he starts a game’s combat. At that moment he’s isolated from his team with opponents spread around the field. Baseball’s image as the game of seventy percent failure (it really isn’t, but that’s another story) doesn’t comfort him when he swings, misses, or hits into another out, another time, another baseball death.

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Bravery was simple in the halcyon days when the man once known as “Crush” Davis led the American League in home runs in two out of a particular three seasons. It was far less so when he led the American League in strikeouts in two straight seasons. It was impossible, in theory, when Davis had a lower OPS in 2018 than the worst such team in the league. (Davis: .539; the Detroit Tigers: .697.)

By the time Chris Davis faced Boston Red Sox right-hander Rick Porcello with the bases loaded in the bottom of the first, he probably pushed all the foregoing out of his mind, like the professional he is, and reminded himself that now was an entirely singular moment. On 1-0 Davis caught hold of an inside fastball and pulled it on a slash into right-field, sending Trey Mancini and Rio Ruiz home to open the scoring.

The Fenway Park audience was well enough aware of Davis’s September-April slump to give him a standing ovation after that hit. And it must have done something else to Davis, because—after grounding out to first unassisted in the third, and the Orioles opened the fifth with back-to-back singles in a now 2-2 tie—Davis was the first man to face incoming Red Sox reliever Heath Hembree. And he ripped a double to the back of right-center field to break the tie, sending Renato Nunez home.

An inning later, the Orioles hung two more runs up on back-to-back bases-loaded singles, bringing up Davis to push a third run of the inning home on a grounder to short that turned into an unassisted force at second base. In a game the Orioles hung in to win, Davis accounted for a full third of the Oriole runs.

“Going through the struggles that he has, he kept his chin up no matter what,” said Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins. “To witness that in person, it’ll help me maintain my composure when I go through the same thing.”

For his own part, Davis showed a fine sense of humor about the temporarily-broken slump. After that first-inning two-run single, he called for the ball and got it. “I don’t know, but I’m going to get it authenticated,” he cracked. “You have to embrace it at some point.”

You’d love to say that that was the night the sleeping giant awoke, but it didn’t happen quite that way

Baltimore Orioles: Chris Davis wants to give it one more shot

Davis fell back into the wilderness, despite the encouragement of Orioles fans who seemed to appreciate the guts it took for him to get up and try again every time he was returned to his knees. The climax came in early August when he couldn’t handle a routine scoop on a low throw to first, in the fifth inning of a blowout the Orioles would take from the New York Yankees.

When the sides changed, the next thing anyone knew was Crushed Davis in a shouting match with Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, who may have ignited it with an ordinary remark of frustration while forgetting in the moment that Davis’s continuing struggle married to his pride equaled a powder keg.

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The next day Davis was genuinely apologetic for the incident. It happened to be an Orioles off day, so he took sanctuary where he loves it most, with his wife and children. “That’s really the only way that I know kind of how to escape, is just to be a dad, and be a husband,” he said. “I enjoyed the time with them, but I look forward to coming back in there and getting back to work with these guys.”

When he did, the first item on Davis’s agenda was apologizing to the boss, who’d already indicated he wouldn’t hold it against the struggling first baseman. Some in the Baltimore sports press suggested that, regardless, the incident so amplified Davis’s continuing baseball downfall that negotiating a buyout of his lucrative contract (his 2019 salary occupied a quarter of the Oriole payroll) wasn’t exactly an idea either side might reject.

But here Chris Davis is, in spring training now, determined to prove he has something left despite an off-season during which he considered retirement seriously. “I know what I’m capable of,” he told reporters, one of whom, MLB.com’s Joe Trezza, tweeted the remarks.

“I know what I expect of myself. I don’t want to continue to just struggle,” Davis continued. “That’s not fair to these guys. That’s not fair to our fans or anyone associated with Baltimore. But I still think there is something left in the tank.”

After trying every conceivable adjustment previously and still coming up in the basement, too far removed from his seasons in the penthouse, Davis still can’t walk until or unless they rip the uniform away from him. And he shouldn’t. The Orioles weren’t threatened, blackmailed, bribed, or otherwise compelled against their will to offer Davis that seven-year, $161 million contract which still has three seasons to go including 2020.

CBS Sports writer Mike Axisa observes that the Orioles, who stand to remain the Woe-rioles in 2020, can actually afford to let the 33-year-old Davis have that final chance. He won’t be anywhere near the next Oriole contender, whenever it arrives. But for now, Axisa notes, “He’s not blocking a young player at the moment, and the team can see whether something clicks and if he can contribute in any way.”

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If nothing clicks, the Orioles will end up releasing Davis and eating whatever he’s still owed through the end of 2022. Axisa thinks it could happen as soon as this spring or perhaps by mid-season. He also thinks Davis would be an abject fool to retire and leave all that money on the table when the Orioles were foolish enough to want him to have it in the first place.

Earning your money when you’re one of baseball’s biggest boppers is easy. Earning it when you’ve spent a little over three seasons fading slowly away, lost for reasons why, knowing you’ve tried everything short of voodoo, determined to get it back, finding it escaping you time and again, takes its own kind of guts.

“Davis is a guy who has accomplished an awful lot in baseball after struggling in his early 20s,” said The Athletic‘s Ken Rosenthal on a Fox Sports broadcast after that slump-busting night in Fenway, “a guy who was doing extra work before games, but failing every night on the most public of stages, a guy who is deserving of sympathy, not scorn.”

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It’s probably the major reason why Davis shunning retirement just yet wasn’t shown the door by the Orioles just yet, either. And it’ll be the reason why, when the day of reckoning arrives at last, whatever else is wrong with the Orioles’ administration you may not be able to accuse them of malice aforethought.

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