I did a Google search for Chris Davis and it said, “Did you mean Superman?” Weird! The force is very strong in this young Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls; Chris Davis serves the Bomb Pops. I’m not sure if there’s anyone in all of fantasy baseball this year who has climbed further in a shorter time during this offseason. I’ve done my own basting of the turkey with a Chris Davis sleeper post. My fantasy hymen is broken! In my defense, that post was published mid-December and I wrote it sometime in late-November. When I wrote that, Davis was going after Zimmerman, Huff and Atkins in drafts — ah, those were the days — but he’s since flipped the script on them. That makes sense, but now he seems to be shooting even further up draft sheets. Then someone mentioned to me in our fantasy baseball forums or somewhere in the comments or somewhere on the site, I don’t know where, that they drafted Mark Reynolds and they called him a poor man’s Chris Davis. You know what’s funny about this? Not funny funny, but not really funny funny. Chris Davis has never done any of this over a full season, but Mark Reynolds has, so Chris Davis should be a poor man’s Mark Reynolds, shouldn’t he?
I projected Chris Davis for 75/30/95/.275/3 and Reynolds at 75/31/100/.255/7. To take me out of the equation, ZIPS projects Mark Reynolds for 88/28/89/.257/8 and Chris Davis for 84/33/103/.263/6. Um, those numbers are pretty close for each player. Both play in hitter’s parks, so there’s not much of an edge there. Davis has shown he has a greater propensity for line drives so his average should be better than Reynolds, but those projections account for that. Davis is a .260-.280 hitter. Reynolds is a .240-.260 hitter.
Now if they both hit .260, they’re more or less equal. If Davis hits .263 and Reynolds hits .250, then the impact of Chris Davis’s AVG on your team vs. Mark Reynolds is .001 (if you assume the real difference is .013 and they are one of 13 hitters on your team.) Then you have to realize Davis’s projections carry more risk. Point Shares has Davis and Reynolds at #49 and #126, respectively. But why is Chris Davis’s ADP 67 in ESPN and Reynolds is being drafted at 208?
The reality is that anyone taken in lower rounds is going to hurt you somewhere. People seem to be scared off a low average more than low HRs/RBIs. Not sure why. You can take a really good SP and Reynolds; say C-Bill or Beckett and Reynolds. Or you can draft Davis and Andy Sonnanstine. Hmm… Maybe that’s Mark Reynolds in Chuck Norris’s ice cream truck.
