Is Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Davis Legitimately an Elite Hitter?

So, what’s up with Chris Davis? He’s having an eerily similar and probably better season than last year’s Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera, and for some reason it seems like we’re only hearing about Cabrera’s 65 RBI in the first week of June. Don’t get me wrong, that’s crazy stuff, but RBI pretty much mean nothing.

Davis is out-homering Cabrera 20-17 and out-slugging him .754-.668, giving him an other-worldly OPS of 1.194 and OPS+ of 214. In an inferior lineup, no less. Which, of course, is exactly why Cabrera is ahead of Davis in RBI 65-52. Nearly all of what makes up good RBI totals is what lineup you’re in and where one is batting in the lineup.

So why is Chris Davis having a better season than Miguel Cabrera? How has Davis made a jump from a .266/.305/.402 line in 2011 in a season split between Texas and Baltimore to an improved line of .270/.326/.501 line in Baltimore last year, and this year’s .357/.440/.754 craziness that has to decline somewhat, at some point.

The most obvious answer is that he’s laying off of pitches that aren’t in the strike zone. Seems simple enough, but it’s pretty quantifiable. Check this out: in 2011, Davis swung at an astonishing 45.6% of pitches that he saw outside the strike zone. That’s right, he swung at almost half of the pitches he saw that weren’t even strikes. Yikes.

In 2012, Davis swung at 39.8% of pitches outside the strike zone. In 2013, Davis’ chase percentage is all the way down to 33.1%. A 12.5% improvement in less than two calender years is remarkable. Davis’ 2013 walk rate is at 12.4%, and his walk-to-strikeout ratio is at an impressive .54, a year after turning in a .22 and two years after putting up a .17.

And there isn’t that much more to it. Davis has always had light-tower power, and now that he’s being more selective, the sky’s the limit. It’s amazing what only swinging at strikes will do. Of course, don’t count me as someone that believes that Davis will entirely keep up this MVP-like pace. He won’t, but if he’s “figured it out”,  a .300/.400/.600 player is absolutely a perennial all-star. Davis hit .337/.397/.609 over parts of four seasons in Triple-A, and given what he’s been able to sustain over the past two months, who knows. Not everyone is Miguel Cabrera though. Let’s not forget that.