Sunday, January 26, 2020
Thoughts on Jaylin Davis, Outfield Combinations and Conundrums
In a series of recent interviews chronicled by Dr Lefty in her blog, Together We're Giants, Jaylin Davis is emerging as a favorite of Giants management and a potential linchpin of the Giants outfield. Davis seems to get the most mentions by Giants brass in the category of young players they want to get a long look at, which seems to be the emerging theme of the Giants offseason. In the process, they hint at slowing down The Churn to get those longer looks. Why is the Giants collective braintrust so interested in Jaylin Davis, you ask? A clue may come from a Fangraphs article by Jeff Zimmerman from 12/18/2019 where he used his system to identify players who might have a Max Muncy breakout in 2020(The original article unveiling the system was published in Fangraphs 10/11/2018). Zimmerman calls this list his Voit/Muncy All-Stars. Here is the statistical combination Luke Voit, Max Muncy and 10 others had the season before their unexpected breakouts:
Age 25-27 in AAA(presumably potential breakouts are not limited to this age range but he used it to narrow his search).
BB% 8.8 or above.
K% 24 or lower.
IsoP .150 or more.
GB% 44 or lower.
Jaylin Davis meets those criteria, barely, and if you use only his AAA stats from Sacramento(BTW, Mauricio Dubon also meets the criteria if you only use his Sacramento stats). As you may recall Davis struggled in a SSS after during his September callup, but he may have been hampered by a HBP on the hand suffered in one of his early AB's. So, cool! Let's put Jaylin Davis out on RF and give him at least 2 months to see if he can make us all forget about Max Muncy(please!?). Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. In the same article by Jeff Zimmerman, Davis makes another list with negative predicted value: Swinging Strikes on Slow Fastballs in the Strike Zone. So there's the first conundrum.
Here's where Farhan Zaidi is going to have to start earning his pay, working through the combinations and permutations of the Giants OF situation. Zaidi appears to have already moved on from the most obvious combination which would have involved bringing Kevin Pillar back in CF and leaving Mike Yastrzemski in RF with or without a RH hitting platoon partner(although Kevin Pillar is still out there on the free agent market). Farhan's explanation for letting Pillar go was giving young players like Jaylin Davis a serious shot. This theme is repeated in multiple interviews by new GM Scott Harris, Farhan and Manager Gabe Kapler(Dr Lefty dubbed them SFG). In addition, the beat writers are reporting YtY as the frontrunner for the staring CF job. So the Opening Day OF roster looks like Davis in RF, YtY in CF and a platoon of Alex Dickerson/Joey Rickard in LF. So we'll call this plan A for now.
I could see Farhan swapping out the LF platoon for Nick Castellanos, but it's been a long time since we heard a Nick Castellanos rumor. Chris Shaw is another younger player who has been mentioned as deserving a longer look, but he's likely the back up plan if Dickerson gets hurt once again. What about Dubon/Duggar platoon in CF moving YtY over to RF and Davis out of the picture? The Giants have not acquired the left-handed hitting 2B Farhan said they were looking for, but Donovan Solano could move into a starting role to let Dubon move to CF. Who backs up Brandon Crawford at SS? Maybe Abiatal Avelino now that Bruce Bochy is not around to remember him running through the stop sign at 3B to get thrown out at home?
What about a RF platoon with YtY and Jaylin Davis? That really limits Davis' ceiling since RH batters only get about 1/4-1/3 of PA's in a straight platoon. If the Giants believe in Davis as much as it sounds like they do, they need to give him more PA's than just the short side of a platoon.
What about another name that has started cropping up in Hot Stove Speculation: Yasiel Puig? Puig is basically the same player as Kevin Pillar, so if that's the direction we're going you'd think Pillar would still be on the roster. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Farhan has not forgotten a trade involving Puig that brought back Jeter Downs and Josiah Gray to the Dodgers and is aware of another trade that brought Trevor Bauer to the Reds. We know Farhan is very into flipping players for prospects to build up the farm system. Again, we get back to how much faith does he have in
Jaylin Davis?
Looming behind all this is Heliot Ramos and the timetable for his MLB debut. We still don't know if that will be in CF or RF, but it's coming. Heliot is still very young and ideally you probably want him to stay in AA all season and push his MLB debut back to midseason 2021 or even 2022, but if all this blows up on Farhan's face and Heliot rakes in Richmond, we could see him sometime in the second half of this season. Jaylin Davis appears to be the key in all of these combinations but the conundrums are aplenty to deal with too.
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Austin Slater: left off both DrB's & Lefty's list because, presumably, K's & GB/FB too high.
ReplyDeleteDespite versatility (IF & OF), CF & SS aren't defensive options for this power deficient batter.
He does hit RH unlike Yaz, Duggar, & Dickerson which is a plus and can play the corners fairly adequately, so with his versatility, does he figure as the 6th man, after the 3 above named LHBs and Davis, plus Dubon/Rickard/Shaw?
Puig & Pillar, too, both RHB, probably put the 27-yo Slater in Sacramento with his last option.
I've heard that the Giants have had Jaylin Davis down in Arizona this winter working on his hitting and pitch recognition.
ReplyDeleteIf Davis doesn't get a long opportunity to prove himself this season I will be semi shocked. Can't be 100% shocked at anything Farhan does at this point other than if he were to actually spend money! He really must have a lot of faith in guys like Davis and Dubon and Wilson since they are basically the extent of his accomplishments 2 years into his role.
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to figure out what makes Farhan special or different from other GM/VP's going through rebuilds. Most teams are honest with their fans when they go through a rebuild process and don't try to sell them on having intentions of competing every year. He is incredibly frugal which isn't exactly something new for rebuilding teams. He is likely going to take at least 5 years to get this team in the playoffs which isn't particularly fast or different from any other rebuilding team.
If you think about it, Farhan becomes a very curious hire for a Giants team with seemingly deep pockets and a demanding fanbase. For a team with as much money as the Giants who claim that winning last year and this year are a priority, they haven't done anything to prove that. Hiring Kaplar and letting MadBum go isn't exactly the best way to endear yourself to this fanbase either.
I think it is pretty clear that Farhan is being set up to be the fall guy before he gets to year 5. Who better to blame for 4 years in a row of failure than the ex-dodger who orchestrated the entire mess. At that point of course fans will come back with Farhan and Kapler gone and ownership will enjoy a stocked farm system and a rock bottom payroll. This was the plan all along.
Bumgarner was gone years ago when the "old" Giants didn't extend him and he bought a ranch in Arizona.
DeleteCan't get premium hitters to SF unless you overpay or they see rings.
Zaidi signed Yaz, Solano, and Vogt.
Fan bases are short term: put a winner on the field, and they all come back.
In the immediate future, there is probably sub .500 and overpriced food at Oracle.
Giants signed/acquired Jaylin Davis, Trevor Gott, Drew Pomeranz, Kean Wong, Tyler Anderson, Dany Jimenez, Alex Dickerson, Tristan Beck, Kai-Wei Teng, Tyson Ross, Drew Smyly, Joey Rickard, and Zach Green.
It's not all bleak.
The Giants should give Jaylin Davis a long look if they think so highly of him. I think Zaidi is balancing whether bringing in a veteran Outfielder would cut into playing time for younger outfielders like Davis too much. These are tough decisions, should they sacrifice short term upgrades to the roster for potential long term gains? I remember AAA manager Dave Brundage had nice things to say about Jaylin Davis so it doesn't surprise me that they are high on him. I'm sure that the Giants have some idea as to when Helliot Ramos will make his MLB debut, so they need to plan ahead by not signing a veteran that could block his path to the big leagues.
ReplyDelete