Ike Davis Sent to Las Vegas-Off the Radar

May 26, 2013; Flushing, NY,USA; New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis (29) heads to first base on his two-RBI single during the eighth inning against the Atlanta Braves at Citi Field. Mets won 4-2. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

The Mets finally sent down Ike Davis to AAA after a horrendous start to the 2013 season, in which he not only had an Isolated Slugging under .100 (fitting for perhaps a middle infielder, a serious problem for a first baseman), but also struck out nearly 32 percent of the time. Davis is coming off of a couple seasons where he hit really well, or was at least above league average.

Many have said that his problems stem from a mechanical problems, as his hands are too far down when he begins his swing, not allowing him to catch up to hard fastballs or inside pitches. This sounds like a perfectly likely explanation, though most mechanical problems are, and many of them are superfluous or wrong. After all, if Davis is so mechanically broken, then how did he have success in previous years, unless something else is at play. To make sure, here is Davis as the pitch was released from the hand of the pitcher on a random home run in 2013:

Here is a random 2012 home run:

I don’t see a mechanical difference, so if you want to argue that he can’t succeed that his hands are the cause of his 2013 failures, the burden of proof is on you. You would have to argue that either pitchers are exploiting it in a way they failed to for the first 3 seasons of his career, or that he has lost some hand speed, which isn’t allowing him to get around on balls.

Davis was in the higher tier of 4-seam fastball whiff percentage, but he was also lower than some notable hitters that are hitting well, such as Didi Gregorius, Yeonis Cespedes, and Carlos Gomez. So it is not like he was rendered helpless by fastballs. Here is what Ike Davis’ strike zone looked like this year on fastballs that were about 95 MPH, labelled with results, just to see if he was having problems getting around on balls:

He obviously wasn’t doing much with plus fastballs, and all of his swinging strikes come up, especially middle up.

For comparison, here is Davis’ strike zone map on pitches 76 MPH and below, which equals roughly the same amount of pitches.

Percentage wise, Davis is worse, even compared to league averages, on slow pitches than hard pitches. Here there isn’t just one zone he was having problems with. He missed some real hanging curveballs, along with some in the bottom away part of the strike zone, and low and in not inside the strike zone, chasing.

Here is where pitchers pitched him on average:

The average pitch is nothing unusual, as pitchers threw the ball away from him on average (again hurting the thesis that he his problems stemmed from pitchers throwing the ball hard and in on him). His contact plays were all in about the same spot, while the swinging strikes are more in, but also lower than the average pitch.

To get a further look, here are all of Davis’ swinging strikes:

There are some up and out of the strike zone, but no real congregation up and in, with the majority coming away, and a whole lot of them coming low and out of the strike zone, many of those coming in. He was clearly having a lot of problems with breaking balls, most likely a pitch recognition problem (though, one could argue that his hand speed was gone and he knew he needed to get started early, making him commit before he recognized the pitch, making him an extreme guess hitter).

Here are what the pitches thrown inside on him (I used the inside 4th of the plate on) looked like

As you see, the problem isn’t so much up and in, it is the pitches below the zone that has a large number of swings and misses.

To give us an idea of what kind of pitchers Davis is struggling against, here are the release points of the opposing pitchers Davis whiffed at or made contact with. Blues are the whiffs, and yellow are the contact plays:

The higher up right-handers were problems for Davis, while the lower right-handers Davis is having more success with. This isn’t surprising or anything unusual. He was able to handle lefties with low release points pretty well, with predictably mediocre results against lefties with further out release points.

Simple explanations like “his hands are too low” are probably not very helpful when looking at Davis’ problems. Plate discipline also seems to be too simple of an explanation as well, as he was still walking at a decent rate, and his plate discipline numbers aren’t worse (and in some cases, are actually better). His general contact rate has gone way down though, and that is the problem. For now, pitchers can throw low and in breaking balls to him and get him out. Figuring out exactly why this is will be the Mets’ task, especially the coaching staff at AAA Las Vegas, because there is a clear hole in his game and while strikeouts can be overrated when evaluating hitters, it is hard to succeed with the amount of strikeouts Davis had accumulated in his 55 games in 2013.