Chris Davis and Crazy Singular Seasons

A moment of appreciation for guys who spark a memory.

Hi Everyone —

So, this is fun: I’ve talked before about my belief that “A League of Their Own” might just be the best baseball movie ever made. I’m planning a countdown of the greatest baseball movies to run here over the next few weeks — obviously, your comments and email thoughts are more than welcome — and this will lead up to something pretty awesome:

On August 20, at the Aero Theater in Los Angeles, Mike Schur and I will be opening the American Cinematheque Podcast Festival to introduce, yep, “A League of Their Own.” Tickets are $12 for members and $17 for general admission.

We’ll sign some books. We’ll talk about Kit. We’ll discuss if David Strathairn is the best minor baseball character actor ever. We’ll go over the most underrated lines of the movie (I’m leaning toward, “I was going to send you a thank you card, Mr. Harvey, but I wasn’t allowed anything sharp to write with.”)

We’ll break down essential questions such as:

• Just how good a scout was Jon Lovitz?

• Is Madonna a better ballplayer than Rosie O’Donnell?

• Just how fast is Lori Petty? Sheesh. She seems REALLY fast.

• Did that bus driver really pick up a bunch of dirt and throw it into the face of Miss Cuthbert? That seems super rude.

• Where does Marla Hooch rank among the greatest-ever switch hitters? Behind Eddie Murray but ahead of Mark Teixeira?

• Yeah, we’ll ask the big question about the ending.

They’re trying to nail down a guest or two — don’t know if that will happen, but if it does, whoo boy. Whatever happens, it should be a total blast … come on out if you’re in LA.

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As I write these words, Yordan Alvarez leads the American League in, get ready for this:

• Batting average: .321 (18-point lead)

• Home runs: 35 (4-homer lead)

• RBI: 80 (7-ribbie lead)

• Runs: 74 (1-run lead)

• Hits: 126

• OBP: .432

• Slugging: .640

• OPS (of course): 1.073

• OPS+ (naturally): 198

• Total bases: 251

• Extra-base hits: 55

• Times on base: 205

• Adjusted batting runs: 55

• Intentional walks: 19

• rOBA: .449

• wOBA: .444

• xwOBA: .475

• Offensive WAR: 5.4

• Isolated Power: .319

There’s more, but let’s stop there. We know that there’s a lot of crossover here, double-counting and so on, but it’s worth pausing to note that Yordan Alvarez is having one of the most dominant offensive seasons in the history of baseball. In an era when nobody’s hitting — I mean, nobody, the league continues to hit in the low .240s and slug around .400 and batters are left desperately swinging for the fences in the off-chance of running into one — Yordan Alvarez is crunching baseballs like it’s the 1990s again. He’s like a left-hand-hitting Marla Hooch! What a hitter!

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The Orioles are putting Chris Davis in their Hall of Fame this weekend … and I’m thinking a lot about his mind-boggling 2013 season (2015 also, but especially 2013). I’ve long had a soft spot for Davis because in his rookie year, I watched him blast a long home run against the Royals and I thought, “this guy’s got crazy power.”

He did have power … but it didn’t look like he would make contact enough to use it. In his second season, he struck out 150 times in 113 games, barely walked, and not long after the Rangers gave up on him, sending him to Baltimore for Koji Uehara*. Davis immediately looked like a different hitter with Baltimore; he mashed 33 home runs in 139 games in 2012.

*They let Uehara go almost immediately … just in time for Boston to sign him. Uehara would then have one of the great relief pitcher seasons ever and lead the Red Sox to a World Series championship.

Even so, that 2013 season was like a spaceship landing. I love crazy singular seasons.

• In 1961, Jim Gentile hit .302/.423/.646 with 46 homers and 141 RBI.

• In 1989, Kevin Mitchell hit .291/.388/.635 with 47 homers and 125 RBI.

• In 1996, pretty famously, Brady Anderson hit .297/.396/.637 with 50 homers.

• In 1998, Greg Vaughn hit .272/.363/.597 with 50 homers.

• In 2005, Derrek Lee hit .335(!)/.481/.662 with 46 homers and 50 doubles!

• In 2010, out of nowhere, José Bautista hit 54 home runs and slugged .617.

• In 2017, Carlos Peña hit .282/.411/.627 with 46 homers.

• In 2018, Jorge Soler hit 48 home runs after hitting 38 homers in his first five years combined.

• And, of course, last year Cal Raleigh hit 60 home runs. The way he’s going, he might not get 60 hits this year — it’s baffling.

Stuff like this is part of what keeps baseball fresh and alive … you never can tell. Chris Davis was a 6-foot-4, 250-pound Texan who swung the bat like he was a lumberjack trying to take down trees with one swing, and in 2013, he ran into almost everything. Oh, well, he still struck out 199 times, but when he hit the ball, he HIT the ball. He had ninety-six extra-base hits in 584 at-bats, that’s about one in every six at-bats, which is bonkers.

Here are the only players who hit 50 home runs and 40 doubles in the same year:

1. Babe Ruth, 1921

2. Albert Belle, 1995

3. Chris Davis, 2013.

How crazy is that? Batting average is not especially pertinent in most situations, but Davis hit .286 in 2013, which, for Crush, is a bit like hitting .400. This is a guy who hit .196 the next year and, in his last four seasons, hit .185 combined.

After this season, there will be three players named Davis in the Orioles Hall of Fame — legendary broadcaster Tom Davis, solid-mid-1980s pitcher Storm Davis and, yes, Chris Davis. And it’s worth taking a moment to talk about how the Orioles do their Hall of Fame — it is filled with players who don’t exactly shout “Orioles legend.” I mean — Joe Orsulak? Mike Devereaux? Hal Brown? Mike Bordick? Terry Crowley?

But the feeling in Baltimore seems to be — any player who sparks a memory should be in the Orioles Hall of Fame. I dig that. The Chris Davis contract the Orioles signed, alas, turned into an unmitigated disaster. The Orioles paid him $161 million between 2016 and 2023, and during that time, he compiled -2.8 WAR. But so what? For a year in 2013 — and then, to a slightly lesser extent, in 2015 — Chris Davis was jaw-dropping, he was awesome, he was the highlight of Camden Yards. The memories are thick. There will be joy as he is inducted into the Hall.

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With the trade deadline rapidly approaching*, we now wait to see where Tarik Skubal ends up … and wait for the nuclear explosion that will set off when he ends up with the Dodgers.

I’m not saying he WILL end up with the Dodgers.

I’m saying they all end up with the Dodgers.

*On Trade Deadline Day, Molly Knight and I will have a live conversation, in part because it will be fun, and in part to promote The Joy of Baseball podcast, which will debut on August 11. The podcast itself will be on all the platforms — Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and the rest — but we’re planning to do all sorts of other things like live conversations for our subscribers! And if you are a subscriber here or to Molly’s awesome Long Game newsletter, you will be automatically subscribed for the first year.