Ike Davis is off to a great start this year, with a .316/.407/.579 slash line. Over at ESPN, they use what the player has done so far and use that to project what the player would do for the entire season if he kept up his current pace. While it’s not serious analysis, it’s fun to look at, especially early in the season to see what wild numbers a player is on pace to produce.
If Davis keeps up his current production, he would finish with 29 HR and 133 RBIs. The latter mark would be a team record.
It is fun to root for guys who hit a bunch of HR and drive in lots of runs. When the player in question is a homegrown product, it is even better. When the team has a dearth of power hitters in its history, it becomes something akin to winning the Triple Crown. That’s the situation that Mets fans find themselves with Davis.
Only two first basemen in Mets history have ever hit 30 HR in a single season. Carlos Delgado holds the record with 38 HR, which he delivered in both 2006 and 2008. The other was Dave Kingman, who blasted 37 in 1982. As for a homegrown player, the leader is John Milner, who hit 23 HR in 1973. That’s a sad total to lead a franchise and to make matters worse, Milner’s 1973 total is the seventh-best mark for a first baseman in franchise history.
As a matter of comparison, nine first basemen in the majors hit 30 or more HR in 2010.
Only one first baseman in team history has ever produced a .300/.400/.500 slash mark, like Davis currently has. That was John Olerud in 1998, his second year with the club, when he posted a .354/.447/.551 line. And while that was a remarkable season, Olerud had just 22 HR.
Davis does a good job of drawing walks, with a 13.2 BB% this year, following up last season’s 12.0 percent mark. If he can hit .300 for the year, he should be able to reach a .400 OBP and a .500 SLG. But Davis sits with a .370 BABIP right now, meaning it’s unlikely he will finish the year with a .300 AVG. Last year he posted a .321 BABIP, a very good mark but significantly below what he is currently producing.
Anyone who saw Davis’ monster home run to straight away center field on April 21 (estimated by Hit Tracker as 456 feet) has no doubt about his power. If Davis plays a full season, he would seem to have an excellent shot to hit 30 HR.
But not only does ESPN’s projected total leave him shy of 30 HR, ZiPS (U) shows him finishing the year with 24 HR. Updated ZiPS takes what a player has done already this season and factor that into his computer-devised forecast. It’s a more sophisticated method than the ESPN model. At the start of the season, ZiPS had Davis finishing the year with 22 HR, so his projection is already two higher than the beginning of the year.
Apparently, the model does not think Davis can maintain his current HR/FB rate of 17.4 percent. While it is noticeably above last year’s rate of 12.0 percent for Davis, it is not an outrageous number. Currently, it is tied for the 33rd-best HR/FB rate in the majors. The forecast also expects Davis to strike out a tad more than he currently is whiffing. He currently has a 26.4K% and ZiPS (R) expects Davs to post a 27.8 percent rate from here until the end of the season.
But, as the saying goes, this is why they play the games. We get to watch and see if Davis can continue to amaze us with his hitting exploits. This year and the years to come, I want to see Davis’ name dominate the team’s first base leaderboard, keeping up with Delgado, Kingman and Olerud.
At the very least, I want to see him eclipse Milner’s mark and become the first homegrown first base product to top 25 HR in a season.
The thing that really gives me hope for Davis is the way he went about last year. He came out raking and then the pitchers figured him out and made adjustments. When he first came up he really had a tendency to step into the bucket and try to pull everything. So when the pitchers took advantage of that, he really struggled.
But Davis was able to make several adjustments, stopped trying to pull everything and started hitting the outside pitch the other way. He is strong enough to hit the ball out to left field.
Now I am sure that pitchers will adjust again and he will have to readjust. But it is comforting to know that he has been able to do that already. The one area where I still have concern is his tendency to whine about called strikes. Umpires don’t like it and it can’t help. But all in all he has shown all the right things to continue to have a productive career.