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Baltimore Orioles: The five best first basemen in Orioles history

By Tim Smart

BALTIMORE, MD - SEPTEMBER 30: A general view during the fourth inning of the Baltimore Orioles and Houston Astros game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on September 30, 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)
BALTIMORE, MD - SEPTEMBER 30: A general view during the fourth inning of the Baltimore Orioles and Houston Astros game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on September 30, 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images) /
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Over the past eight years, Chris Davis has gone from exciting trade-deadline acquisition in 2011, to fan favorite during the Orioles postseason pushes in 2012 and 2014, to pariah in 2018

If you’re feeling contempt toward Chris Davis at the moment, it’s probably your recency bias working against you. When Davis was acquired in 2011 in the Koji Uehara trade, he was a slugger with big time power and real contact problems, similar to Joey Gallo or Pedro Cerrano.

After being thrust into an every day role in 2012, Davis hit 33 homers with an .827 OPS and a 121 wRC+. Davis hit his peak in 2013 when he hit .286/.370/.634 with a league-leading 53 home-runs and a 168 wRC+. The 53 homers remain the most in a single-season in Orioles history.

But for Davis, one of the biggest improvements he made was in his plate discipline. 2013 remains the only full-season in his career where he’s posted a strikeout rate below 30%, and his walk rate jumped from 6.6% in 2012 to 10.7% in 2013; that’s part of the reason Davis became such a formidable hitter.

His 7.0 fWAR performance in 2013 earned him his first and only All-Star appearance, an AL Silver Slugger award and a third-place AL MVP finish.

Davis was again dominant in 2015, posting 47 homers with a .923 OPS and down-ballot MVP votes. However, he’s been in steady decline since the end of that 2015 season.

Entering his age-30 season in 2016, Davis received a 7-year, $161 million deal from the Orioles. Owner Peter Angelos wanted to keep Davis at any cost, even though what he’d done to that point seemed unsustainable.

But it isn’t Chris Davis’ fault that the Orioles paid him. The blame for the Davis contract lies exclusively on Dan Duquette and Peter Angelos, and it only feels like blame right now because Davis just posted one of the worst seasons for a hitter in MLB history.

There will certainly be people who remember Davis as a poor hitter with a contract that turned into an albatross, but Davis was as much a part of the Orioles success over the past eight years as anyone.

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