Draft Day Dilemmas: Do we know what we're getting from Chris Davis?

Chris Davis has seen major peaks and valleys in the past two seasons. Heath Cummings looks into what we should expect from the Orioles slugger in 2016.

Over the past four seasons, no player in major league baseball has hit more home runs than Chris Davis. Only three players have more RBI. Of course, that doesn't mean Davis is without faults. Most notably, his 2014 campaign was a disaster with a batting average below the Mendoza Line and a 25-game suspension for using Adderall.

Davis bounced back in 2015 to lead the majors in home runs, finish third in RBI, and score 100 runs for the second time in his career. Of course, when you look at those statistics, that .196/.300/.404 stat line from 2014 is never too far out of mind. Questions still remain for a player with a career 31 percent K rate such as whether another disaster like 2014 may loom.

We should start by taking a look at that disaster in context. Below are Davis' stats from each of the past four seasons, normalized for 160 games. What stands out?

Year	HR	RBI	AVG	BABIP	OPS
2012	38	98	.270	.335	.827
2013	53	138	.286	.336	1.004
2014	33	91	.196	.242	.704
2015	47	117	.262	.319	.923

First off, wow. Just look at that 2013 season. You shouldn't expect Davis to reach those heights again largely because no one does anymore. Davis' 53 home runs were the most since 2010. That was likely his career year, and what a year it was.

The second glaring thing that sticks out is the .196. Where did it come from? Well, look to the right. Davis' .242 BABIP was more than 50 points below league average and almost 80 points below his career average. There's a large amount of luck involved in BABIP and Davis simply had a terribly unlucky year.

That number looks even more unlucky when you consider Davis had the second highest line drive rate of his career in '14 and a hard contact rate that ranked in the top half of the league. Since 2010 there isn't one other player with a line drive rate over 24 percent and a BABIP below .260. That's not to say that Davis couldn't be terribly unlucky again, but it's highly unlikely he's see the type of slump that 2014 produced.

Chris Davis is one of the most "three-true-outcome" players we have in baseball in 2016. More than 45 percent of the time he's come to the plate since 2013 the result has been a walk, a strikeout, or a home run. Over his career Adam Dunn was at 50 percent.

Dunn, in fact, is a pretty solid comp for what to expect from Davis. Dunn was more proficient in walks, but we've seen Davis' walk rate increase each of the past four seasons. Davis has been a slightly better hitter, largely because he hits more line drives. Dunn was a very solid bet for 38-40 home runs and 100-105 RBI in his prime.

That's a small window for a projection, but it's a really solid place to start with Davis. There's not a first baseman who should be projected to hit more home runs than Davis in 2016. He's in a very good offense in the perfect park, so he should be in the top three in RBI as well. In Roto leagues, that's good enough to make him a top five first baseman as long as his BABIP doesn't completely sabotage his average again.

There's some debate about whether Davis should be taken in the first two rounds of drafts. In Roto there shouldn't be any question, start considering him as early as the middle of the second. In points leagues it's a little bit more complicated because of his strikeouts. There is a huge dropoff in first basemen after Davis (assuming you rank him behind Jose Abreu and Edwin Encarnacion). If you're at the end of the second and Davis is the last first baseman in that elite tier left, pounce on him.