With Heyward Gone, Davis Could "Crush" It

By now we all know of the love and admiration for J-Hey shared by all of Cardinal Nation while he played for us. The guy can run, hit, field, throw, and conquer the world all before noon. He will now be doing all of that for the Cubs, which sucks, but I digress. I am not here to talk about Heyward. Well I am, but I’m really here to talk about how Heyward may not be the only answer. I am talking about Chris “Crush” Davis. I know I know he strikes out a lot. I know I know all his value is in his power and he is almost 30 years old. I know I know his nickname is “Crush”, but he didn’t get that name without a reason. Let’s dive in shall we. Let us look at the average stats of Player A and Player B over the last 4 years.

               Avg   HR   RBI   OBP   SLUG   OPS    wRC+
 PlayerA .253   40    103    .339     .525     .864     132
 PlayerB .271   16     78     .348     .432     .780     118

As you can see player A has been a much more productive player on average over the last 4 seasons. While Player B gets on base more he is sufficiently behind in HR and wRC+. Player A is Chris Davis. Player B is the man now in blue J-Hey. While one can call Davis’ career up and down and Heyward’s stats tend to be more consistent let me throw this out there. The down year that Davis experienced in 2014 was a year spent while being denied (and subsequently suspended for using his prescribed Adderall) his ADD medication. I have a good friend, and co-worker, who suffers from this unfortunate problem. The man is one of the most efficient and effective workers when on his medication. When off we would be better off zip-tying him to a chair as it would benefit all of us greatly in production. Point being that Davis, being denied his medication by the league, could have been hampered by the inability to take his prescribed medication. One cannot assume the entire season an aberration, but it wasn’t par for the course with the 3 seasons surrounding 2014.

 If you remove the 2014 season all together his line improves dramatically.

            Avg   HR  RBI  OBP  SLUG    OPS  wRC+
 Davis .272    44   113  .352    .565     .918    145

 Davis’ numbers, sans the suspension season, are an absolute elite level. He gets on base just as much as Heyward and eclipses him in Slugging, OPS and wRC+. Heyward’s tremendous value comes from his defense but I feel that Davis’ offensive output brings his value at least up to Heyward’s level overall. Detractors will say that because of his age his power will decline and that couldn’t be more true. I will also agree that his bat is truly all Crush has to offer as his fielding and base-running are average to just below average. However I believe that the chart above is the true Davis. Not fast, not the best glove, but my god he hits the ball far. I think we would all enjoy at a few seasons of that, even with some decline.

I, like most of you, enjoy frequenting twitter throughout games during the season and one of the complaints most heard was the lack of “pop” in our lineup. Truly it felt like no one, not named Matt Carpenter, was consistently driving the ball with any authority. Homeruns felt like a pleasant anomaly. I personally would’ve loved to have seen a few of Davis’ 47 long balls driving in some Redbirds.

 I wanted the Cardinals to sign Heyward. However, since he left us for less green pastures, Davis would be an excellent addition to our power deficient lineup. He significantly upgrades our situation at 1B and it would allow Piscotty/Pham/Grichuk more ample opportunities the roam the outfield at Busch. I think we all can agree we want to see more of them. Even though J-Hey left, all hope is not lost. It can be found in the giant named “Crush”. The only man in baseball whose forearms rival Holiday’s.

Thanks for reading.

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