Henry Davis has, unfortunately, become the Pirates' "other" No. 1 draft pick. As Paul Skenes continues to elevate to superstar status, Davis — the top pick in 2021 — is just trying to hold on to an MLB career. He's only played 118 career games, but hasn't shown much of anything in those games, posting a .193 batting averaging and a minus-1.4 WAR.
Enter Adam Frazier, I guess? On the Pirates broadcast on Wednesday, Pirates reporter Hannah Mears mentioned that Adam Frazier had recently introduced Davis to a new hitting drill that might help Davis pull the ball more.
"Henry Davis, last night after that two-run homer, credited some success to a veteran on this team in Adam Frazier. Frazier said he noticed Henry Davis hammering a ton of baseballs but kept pulling all of them foul, so what he did was, he taught him a little bit of a drill to help pull the ball in and make more contact to the middle of the field," she said.
Literally as she was talking, Davis pulled an RBI single to left field. It was as "on cue" as possible.
Granted, I'm sure Pirates hitting coaches have tried just about everything with Davis during his time in the bigs, and two good games is far from enough of a sample size to make any declarations about Henry Davis "figuring it out." But at this point, any positive progress should be celebrated, and it's not nothing that Davis immediately thanked Frazier for his help.
A hot Henry Davis would shift Pirates future
Davis doesn't need to become the best catcher in baseball to be a success story. At this point, if he can be a reliable everyday catcher who hits above league average, that would be a success. If he can elevate to a 30-home run guy, even better!
If he does any of that, you know who to credit... Adam Frazier, apparently.