While recounting his home run in Saturday night's Orioles win over the Oakland Athletics, first baseman Chris Davis hid an interesting nugget inside a lot of baseball-speak that could easily be overlooked.
"I felt like the last couple games, my at-bats have been getting a lot better, my swing just didn't feel like it was right the last couple of weeks," Davis said. "The last few days, it's starting to get there. I feel like I've been seeing the ball well all year. I either haven't had a lot to hit or I've been chasing pitches out of the zone. It felt good to get a good swing out tonight, and we'll try to keep it rolling."
There's no denying most of that, especially the part where he said it felt good to hit a home run. I wouldn't know. But it's also true that Davis isn't really getting many pitches to hit this season.
According to FanGraphs, he entered the weekend with just 40.3 percent of the pitches he's seen located inside the strike zone, tied for the ninth-lowest such rate in the majors. It's nothing new to him — his "Z-rate," as it's known, is 41.5 percent for his career, and was 41.3 percent last season. But it goes to show that pitchers know what Davis can do to pitches in the zone, and they try to avoid it.
He was being a bit hard on himself when chastising himself for chasing outside the strike zone, though. Davis has a career chase rate of 35.6 percent, but is swinging at just 29.1 percent of pitches outside the strike zone this season. All of that has contributed to a strikeout rate (30.8 percent) that's right around his career average (31 percent), but a walk rate of 14.5 percent that's markedly better than his career 9.1 percent rate. He was the early poster child of the team's patient approach over the first two weeks, but at least team-wide, that waned recently.
The changeup he put into the bleachers in right-center field was just a reward for what Davis said was an improving approach, something he also ascribed to the team as a whole.
"The first game, I think really toward the end of the first game we kind of started turning it on a little bit," he said. "You can't wait around forever, but you know days like today you're going to have to grind it out. We've been doing a pretty good job of having quality at-bats. The last couple of weeks, we just haven't gotten anything to fall or been able to build any momentum in. Today, or tonight, we were able to do that."
Davis' home run, his eighth of the season and first since the first game of this homestand, on April 28, ended an 0-for-16 slump. The skid had dropped his batting average from .235 to .202, though he rests at .206 following the home run during a 1-for-4 night.