2013 IPP: Ike Davis

[Benjamin Grimm]

So who is Ike Davis? The guy who hit .160 for two and a half months and looked completely lost? Or the guy who cranked it up in the second half and finished with 32 home runs?

I'm counting on it being the latter. I'll admit there may be wishful thinking here, but I think Ike is going to come through pretty big in 2013. He'll approach 40 homers and may even break the club record of 41. He'll drive in about 110 runs. I'll even predict that he'll be the Schaefer Mets Player of the Year.

What do you expect from Ike Davis?

[MFS62]

.278-38-118.

Later

[Centerfield]

Wow, really. I'd sign on for both of those right now.

I think Ike will continue to struggle with consistency and hitting lefties.

.245 - 35 HR - 95 RBI

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: So who is Ike Davis? The guy who hit .160 for two and a half months and looked completely lost? Or the guy who cranked it up in the second half and finished with 32 home runs? I'm counting on it being the latter. I'll admit there may be wishful thinking here, but I think Ike is going to come through pretty big in 2013. He'll approach 40 homers and may even break the club record of 41. He'll drive in about 110 runs. I'll even predict that he'll be the Schaefer Mets Player of the Year. What do you expect from Ike Davis?

I'm still optimistic on Ike. Enough so that I could envision Grimm's latter scenario without offending my strict personal sense of realism.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

30-100/260/350/490

[Edgy MD]

Is the Fever thing done?

I don't know, but I like to think he's negotiated with it and knows how to pace himself through the season. .286 / 41 / 124.

[Ceetar]

I guess I should be consistent with my predictions, and I did Ike previously so:

.271/.350/.533 41hr, tying the franchise record for HR.

It's probably a tad high on the AVG/SLG portion though.

[ashie62]

.265 35 HR 100 RBI stays healthy..

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Y'alls have some HIGH RBI numbers for a guy in this offensive environment.

590 PAs, .266/.355/.511, 77 R, 32 HR, 91 RBI, 63 XBH

[Edgy MD]

Yabbut... he's gonna be a runaway train of productivity. And David Wright and Daniel Murphy will be on base for all his homers. Maybe Nieuwenhuis once or twice too!

Sometime around week four, Kirk Gibson will walk him to instead pitch to Duda. Oh, mercy, will Kirk regret that.

[smg58]

.270/.350/.530, with 35 kabooms and an even 100 for an RBI total.

[metsmarathon]

270/360/520 doesn't seem egregiously optimistic, with about 40 homers.

i think he's more like hte player we saw at hte beginning of '11 and end of '12, but he'll have to stay healthy for it. i'd like to dream his batting average to be a little higher, but then i'm getting greedy.

i think, moreso, that if he could drive in 90 with the season he had last year, he should be able to send ten more metties around hte bases this year with relative ease.

[Vic Sage]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Y'alls have some HIGH RBI numbers for a guy in this offensive environment. 590 PAs, .266/.355/.511, 77 R, 32 HR, 91 RBI, 63 XBH

This, more or less. Which would be fine.

[Zvon]

I hope he learned last year that if he keeps his fluid swing he does not have to press or swing for the fences. The home runs will come.

36 HR/96 RBI/.276 avg.

[Theoldmole]

.275, 38 HR, 111 RBI.

[Guest vtmet]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: So who is Ike Davis? The guy who hit .160 for two and a half months and looked completely lost?

The thing is though...Davis was still a "newbie" when he missed most of the previous season...then had to rehab that ankle injury, which was then compounded by the desert fever thing...Davis's injury occurred on the 36th game of the season, and only the 183rd day of his career (he was hitting .302 with a .905 OPS at that time (and .271 with a .817 OPS in his 183 game career)...

So...IMO, the .160 is more of an anomaly, than a normality for Ike's true self...It was basically his spring training after missing a season...

He's probably never going to be a "triple crown" candidate because of the Ryan Howard like shift that teams put on him (which he hits into, but would be a clean single for Murphy); plus his bickering with homeplate umps is never going to win him any borderline pitches...

I'd say that overall, he's a .270'ish hitter, with an 850+ OPS; 30ish HRs and 60+ Extra basehits...The main plus for him isn't his average/OBP; it's his power potential to be able to crush Homeruns consistently against any pitcher in any ballpark...

I was in Tampa last year when he had been struggling, and he absolutely crushed a 3 run Homerun off lefty JP Howell (Howell allowed 7 HRs in 55 games last season with only 1 of those other 6 HRs coming against a Lefty hitter)...
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=howeljp01&year=2012&t=p
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TBA/TBA201206120.shtml

[TransMonk]

I'll take the under for Ike's BA with everyone's predictions save CF's

30+ HRs with too many Ks.

[Ceetar]

TransMonk wrote: I'll take the under for Ike's BA with everyone's predictions save CF's 30+ HRs with too many Ks.

As Alderson noted the other day, it's probably not too many Ks with 30+ HR if he's also walking occasionally.

[TransMonk]

Unless he can put up triple digit RBIs to go with the 30 HRs, it will be too many in my book.

[Guest vtmet]

TransMonk wrote: Unless he can put up triple digit RBIs to go with the 30 HRs, it will be too many in my book.

this is a tough team to produce 100 RBI for...Wright had 662 Plate Appearances, hit .306 while driving himself in 21 times and he only had 93 RBI...Mets have a bunch of #2, #3, #7 and #8 type of hitters, but not a single good choice to "set the table" at the top of the order...Can't really blame the meat of the order when you got mules instead of thoroughbred race horses hitting in front of them...

[Ceetar]

TransMonk wrote: Unless he can put up triple digit RBIs to go with the 30 HRs, it will be too many in my book.

That has everything to do with Wright, Tejada, and Valdespin/Cowgill/Murphy/etc and very little to do with Ike.

[TransMonk]

Ceetar wrote: TransMonk wrote: Unless he can put up triple digit RBIs to go with the 30 HRs, it will be too many in my book. That has everything to do with Wright, Tejada, and Valdespin/Cowgill/Murphy/etc and very little to do with Ike.

Stranding runners, ending innings, killing rallies...those are the types of Davis Ks that will add up to too many in my book.

Eventually someone who comes up after the third spot in the lineup is going to need to be able to hit consistently. I'm not sure I've identified a 2013 Met who gives me confidence that they are the player who is going to do that.

[Guest vtmet]

Funny thing is...how would people feel if this was Ike's "average" season in a long term career?

.263 average; .878 OPS; 120 strikeouts; 92 RBI; 83 runs; 32 HRs; 23 doubles; 4 triples...

Would that be "great"; "very good"; "good"; "mediocre"; "crap"?

the reason I ask? That was Strawberry's average season as a Met...while putting up relatively below average RF defense...Ike is a much better 1st baseman than Straw was a RFer...

[TransMonk]

I'd be more than OK with Ike's final stats from 2012 in 2013...I would only want to see the drastic 1st half/2nd half splits even out.

If he maintains what he did in the 2nd half of 2012 for all of 2013...then we've got the potential to have something special going on.

My goal for Ike in 2013 would be consistency.

[metsmarathon]

its a slightly different offensive environment, so i'd like to reframe the question.

as a met, darryl averaged a 145 OPS+. if ike can finish his long metly career with a 145 OPS+ i will be thrilled and ecstatic. for comparison sake, albert belle finished his career with a 144 OPS+, lance berkman is at 146 OPS+.

that said, an 0.878 career OPS would basically mean being consistently in the top 10 in the league for OPS, so it's really nothing to shake a stick at.

i'll take it.

[Guest vtmet]

metsmarathon wrote: its a slightly different offensive environment, so i'd like to reframe the question. as a met, darryl averaged a 145 OPS+. if ike can finish his long metly career with a 145 OPS+ i will be thrilled and ecstatic. for comparison sake, albert belle finished his career with a 144 OPS+, lance berkman is at 146 OPS+. that said, an 0.878 career OPS would basically mean being consistently in the top 10 in the league for OPS, so it's really nothing to shake a stick at. i'll take it.

true enough...

until recent years, I never paid attention to "OPS"; "OPS+"; "OBP"; etc...

The way that I always looked at it:
The fast guys were supposed to score;
the non-fast guys were supposed to hit for power and drive in the fast guys;
and the rest better either be good on defense or pitch real well (throw strikes, keep guys off base and not let them score)...

[batmagadanleadoff]

From Baseball Prospectus 2013:

Davis's 2012 was reminiscent of those old Tony Bautista seasons where the home runs make you perk up right before the on-base percentage lets you back down. Talk of Davis's nightlife habits surfaced simultaneously with trade rumors in September, but rebuilding teams don't get anywhere by trading young, cheap players at the nadir of their value. Unless there's a real problem in his behavior, he's a bounce-back candidate: He swings at the pitches that power hitters should swing at, takes his walks, hits the ball in the air, and has consistently shown plenty of pop, including posting the 18th-best isolated slugging in baseball last year. Comparables: Don Mincher, Mark Teixeira, Joey Votto

Most similar batters through age 25 (from Baseball Reference) Bob Robertson, Carlos Delgado, Mo Vaughn

[Benjamin Grimm]

Okay, so what's up with this guy? A second horrid start in a row makes last year seem much less like an anomaly. Is he again going to stay below the Mendoza line until deep into the summer? Is he becoming a player whose hot streaks, while wonderful, don't compensate for his long periods of hibernation? I had had high hopes that he'd be a long-time All-Star first baseman for the Mets, but that hope has seriously faded.

Will he snap out of it? Will Ike be the Mets starting first baseman on their next contending team? Or will they have to move on from him?

[ashie62]

Some players are just not worth the aggravation and Ike Davis is one of them....

[Edgy MD]

Disagree.