Orioles
Davis hands O’s impressive power
Secret to slugger’s streak is in his approach to swing
Scott Coolbaugh, his longtime hitting coach who now oversees his work with the Orioles, sums it up succinctly: “It’s like a Nintendo game when he’s going well.”
What it takes to get to that point — and what buttons Davis is pushing on the proverbial controller — isn’t as complicated as it might appear.
But what’s important for the Orioles is that he’s doing it. With two home runs Tuesday night, he entered action Wednesday night on one of his patented tears.
The explanations from all parties involved as to why are hyperspecific, but they all boil down to something simple that Coolbaugh says Davis constantly is aware of but needs to consciously strive for to achieve.
“I think that that’s the biggest thing for him — he’s not trying to create power,” Coolbaugh said before Wednesday’s game. “He’s not trying to lift the ball out of the ballpark. He’s just trying to get a good pitch and put a good swing on it at a controlled effort level.
“That’s why you hear words like calm, different, hands look better. All those type of things. And they will — it’ll clean up. But a lot of the stuff that happens with most hitters, including Chris, is more of a mental thing.”
What matters now for the Orioles is that Davis is in a good place.
He’s batting .318 with a 1.139 OPS in May entering Wednesday’s game, and had a five-game hitting streak during which he had hit four home runs and put together the kinds of at-bats that can disappear on him for months at a time. That brought his season batting average to .266 with eight homers.
But when they come, everyone knows what’s about to happen. Showalter said after Tuesday’s two-homer performance — which made him the second player to hit two go-ahead home runs in extra innings since 1961 — showed “he’s got a little different feel with his hands right now.”
Davis, after that same performance, said he feels “a little calmer, a little more comfortable.”
“I have a tendency early in the year to try to be too aggressive and try to make that feeling appear as opposed to just slowing down and understanding that it’s a long season,” Davis said. “And I just feel like the past few games I’ve been a lot calmer and a lot more comfortable at the plate.”
Coolbaugh, who also worked with Davis while they were with the Texas Rangers, thinks that’s evident in the size of his swing, which might outwardly appear the same but isn’t exaggerated in a way to generate power as it might be in the lean times.
“When you’re not trying to create a move and create power, your hands are working better, your body is staying out of the way of the swing, you seem to hold your position better at the plate so your hands can adjust to the ball,” Coolbaugh said. “Those are the things that you’re seeing from him, and that’s stuff that he’s always done. That’s what good hitters do. They’re able to control the bat head and go directly to the ball without any effort. Consequently, you’re squaring the ball up better and the ball is actually going farther.
Someone with as much power potential as Davis can become conscious of that fact. That might lead to him boxing out certain pitches as ones he can get to and becoming pull-conscious, when in reality, he has the quick hands and barrel control to get to anything.
When he does, as he’s shown the ability to do the past few days, it’s a revelation. Both his third-inning double off the left-center-field wall and his 12th-inning home run Tuesday are the types of balls Davis hits when he’s letting his hands do the work.
On the double, he went upstairs for a letter-high fastball on the outer half and nearly hit it out. The one he did hit out the other way was a middle-middle fastball, but one that wouldn’t have yielded that result on a full-body swing designed to pull the ball.
The second home run in the 13th inning was one of those, one that Davis can get to and yank out to right field often — a fastball at the knees on the inside half.
Rolled together, the Orioles have had a week-plus of this from Davis.
Coolbaugh thinks it started when the team returned home from Boston two weekends ago, and they “started doing some stuff where we tried to emphasize more of his hands than creating a move” with his whole body.
“There’s times when you see Chris where he can just flick at a ball and it just goes out of the ballpark,” Coolbaugh said. “The ball he hit out to left-center, it didn’t look like he hit it, but it just keeps going.”
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