Meet Chris Davis 2.0, Same As The Old Chris Davis

After a June 11 loss to the Red Sox, Buck Showalter benched Chris Davis. Working with some combination of Scott Coolbaugh, Howie Clark, and most notably, Brady Anderson, the Orioles' do-it-all vice president of baseball operations who wants the freedom to keep doing whatever he wants to do, Davis went to work on fixing his batting approach.

During Davis's absence, Showalter noted that Davis would return to the lineup when he got the go-ahead from Anderson and Coolbaugh. He also wouldn't go into the details of what Davis was working on, giving this interesting response:

"I don't think that's fair to him," Showalter said. "It's tough, in a business that you want this instant return. It's like years ago, Rick Down was a first-year hitting coach in New York and he had great ideas — as good a hitting coach as you ever want to see.

"The only thing I cautioned him with big league hitters is be careful coming in so strong right out of the chute, the first day in the cage in spring training because they'll be receptive, but if they don't get this instant return, it's going to be a while until you're going to be able to get in there again. You kind of watch them and take things in and sooner or later, they're going to come over to you and say, hey, what do you think? Then you got them. Because if they don't get an instant return, sometimes at this level, I think the players are so talented, there's some things that he and hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh] and [assistant hitting coach Howie Clark] do, sometimes there's not that instant return that doesn't always come. Sometimes, it's on to the next thing. Sometimes, that can be tough, too. It's true with everybody, not just Chris."

I don't know for sure, but that seems like a long-winded way of saying Davis is impatient. Then again, a few days later, Roch Kubatko dropped this nugget in his morning article on June 17 (emphasis added):

Davis’ t-shirt was soaked with sweat as he returned to the clubhouse and he was in good spirits. It may not provide a solution, but Davis is working on making changes to his approach at the plate. He’s been stubborn to do so, according to multiple people in the organization, but he’s currently under renovation.

Maybe that's not surprising for someone who had so much success earlier in his career. Still, Davis finally surfaced in the O's lineup again on June 22 against the Braves. In his first plate appearance, he walked. In his second, he homered! Later in the game, he also hit a sacrifice fly and was intentionally walked. The next day, Davis knocked in three runs with a bases-clearing double. Considering Davis hadn't collected an extra-base hit for over a month (since May 18), hitting a home run and a double on back-to-back days seemed incredible.

Since that game, though, Davis has failed to reach base in his next 11 plate appearances. Despite that solid return game, Chris Davis 2.0 has performed closely to the first version:

Davis through June 11: .207 wOBA, 23 wRC+, 8.3 BB%, 37.6 K% (229 PA)
Davis from June 22-26: .224 wOBA, 35 wRC+, 9.1 BB%, 45.5 K% (22 PA)

It's such a small sample, so perhaps the results will show up soon. Showalter cautioned that Davis needs to stick with his apparent new approach and fixes, even through the hard times.

Still, while expecting wholesale changes was unlikely -- it's not like Davis was going to completely transform into some contact hitter or entirely overhaul his batting stance in a week and a half -- Davis doesn't look much different from the earlier version.

Here's how his batting stance looked the day before he was benched:

And here's how it looked yesterday against the Mariners:

Maybe his stance is slightly more closed, and perhaps his hands are a little lower. But they're nearly identical.

When Davis struck out on June 11, it looked like this:

Davis struck out three times yesterday. The second one looked like this:

Maybe it's somewhat unfair to focus on these two trips to the plate by Davis. The first is against Steven Wright, a knuckleballer. The second is against James Paxton, one of the best left-handed pitchers in the game. But the day before facing Wright, Davis batted against Marco Estrada and looked the same. Yet, as Showalter has noted more than once, when Davis is back, he's back. It doesn't matter who the opposing pitcher is.

There's no sign that another benching is coming soon. By all accounts, Davis is going to play every day for an extended period of time. The hope is that whatever changes he worked on start to produce actual results, like in those first two games back.

At some point, though, if Davis keeps doing what he's doing, even a team that's 30 games under .500 has to give this up. Whether he hits or not, Davis is going to earn every penny that's owed to him. It's up to the O's to realize that Davis, who has far and away been the worst player in baseball this year, is beyond fixing. That almost certainly won't come this year, but maybe it'll come in 2019. There's only so many times someone can think "he can't be this bad" before reality sets in.