Throughout a year with plenty of ups and downs — especially when focusing on New York Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen’s offseason acquisitions form last winter — J.D. Davis was one player who consistently performed above the league average in the batter’s box. During his first season in Queens, it seemed as if simply having an opportunity to play regularly is what made a difference, which was something he never got with the Houston Astros.
Through his first two big-league seasons (2017-18), Davis earned just 181 plate appearances. This led to a lackluster .194/.260/.321 triple slash with a 27.1% strikeout rate and a 59 wRC+. On a squad loaded with young offensive talent, it wasn’t surprising that the soon-to-be 27-year-old was deemed as an expendable resource. But of course, he impressed in 453 plate appearances with the Mets in 2019, slashing .307/.369/.527 with a 21.4% strikeout rate, 22 homers, and a 136 wRC+.
Davis was already on his way to having a career year heading into July’s All-Star break, as he boasted a 114 wRC+ through 220 plate appearances. However, it was his final 233 trips to the plate that sent him to another level. He slashed .335/.395/.584 during this time, which helped lead to a 156 wRC+. Among qualified hitters in the second half, that wRC+ was good enough to land in the league’s top 15. He ended up tied with Austin Meadows and slightly better than guys we’ve all heard of, like Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts.
So what exactly led to this breakout that’s landed him in an interesting spot with regard to the Mets’ roster construction for 2020? His ability to rake at Citi Field was part of it, but there also was a clear and rather consistent shift in his batted-ball profile.
While he didn’t get enough playing time to really get into a groove with Houston, his ground-ball rate was always pretty high. During that 181-plate-appearance span as an Astro, Davis produced a 53.8% ground-ball rate, and it’s interesting because he drastically outperformed it one season before everything overcorrected in a big way the following year.
As a rookie in 2017, he posted a 60.5% ground-ball rate in 68 plate appearances, yet hit four homers and produced a 100 wRC+. The following season, his ground-ball rate dropped significantly to 50.0% in 113 plate appearances, but it resulted in just one homer and a 35 wRC+. The below table shows Davis’ batted-ball profile progression between these two years, along with each month of the 2019 season in order to see how he continually improved here.
Simply looking at Davis’ season-long batted-ball profile would show positive regression in each of these categories, but most of them don’t show the kind of ride he went on during 2019 in order to finish in the emphatic manner that he ended up showing us all. The better part is that as he’s earned more playing time, certain statistics have continually improved — his ground-ball rate, fly-ball rate, line-drive rate, and soft-hit rate have all gone in the right direction each season since debuting in 2017.
When looking at Davis’ wRC+ against left-handed pitchers (139) and right-handed pitchers (134), there wasn’t much of a difference, and that was also displayed in his batted-ball profile. There was a pretty large difference in his home and road splits, though, since he was much more productive at Citi Field (185 wRC+) than he was as a visiting player (86 wRC+). As a frame of reference, here’s how his batted-ball profile differed from one another for this specific split.
The obvious answer to unlocking the potential within Davis’ bat is to hit fewer ground balls. It’s also obvious that this is easier said than done. What’s good to see here — both in the home/road split and his monthly progression in 2019 — is he doesn’t need a ton of fly balls to flash above-average power (as his .220 ISO from last season shows).
Something else to keep in mind for 2020 is Davis may not have the same kind of success on grounders. His first two big-league seasons led to negative wRC+ numbers (-25 in ’17, -16 in ’18) before jumping all the way up to 68 in 2019. It is worth noting that the right-handed hitter’s process has continually improved each year in pull rate (73.1% to 67.6% to 52.7%), soft-hit rate (23.1% to 18.9% to 13.5%), and hard-hit rate (19.2% to 24.3% to 33.1%). So it wouldn’t be outrageous for him to produce in a similar way again.
These strides on offense have been wonderful to watch for the Mets, but his lack of defense (according to advanced metrics) could continue to bog down his overall value. That’s holding true right now according to his 2020 ZiPS projection, which comes in at 1.3 fWAR.
Either way, Davis’ promising 2019 season as he enters his physical prime could have him as a popular trade target throughout the winter. We’ll just have to wait and see if he can build upon this breakout campaign in Queens or elsewhere.
