Worst Season Ever? Chris Davis, 2018

The Orioles are the St. Louis Browns.  No one really embraces that.  The Orioles consider their franchise beginning in 1954 and disavow their roots.  St. Louis also disavows the Browns as the forgotten, less popular sibling of the St. Louis Cardinals.  The Browns were originally a power play by Ban Johnson to put the American League in direct competition with the National League Cardinals.  It worked and the Browns were fairly competitive until they simply were no longer needed to legitimize the American League.  Sold off to a failed Federal League owner they spiraled down into nothingness.

However, that nothingness was interesting for a few reasons and one was the curious career of shortstop Jim Levey.  In 1930, Levey was a young A ball shortstop playing for Wichita Falls Spudders.  He showed some power and an ability to get on base, but this was not a very competitive league and he had six teammates whose offensive performance was considerably better.  The front office was impressed through by the Spudders and broke 1931 with much of the team as their starting nine.  They were terrible.

Of particular, Levey was atrocious. He could not hit and, to the best of our ability to measure, he was one of the worst fielding shortstops in the league.  He put up the second worst fWAR in history behind only Tommy Thevenow who accomplished a slightly worse performance a year earlier for the Phillies.  Thevenow, also a shortstop, was a stupendous defensive shortstop without a bat and actually enjoyed a long playing career. However, he was dinged up a bit in 1930 and his defense suffered terrible.

After a merely awful 1932 season, Levey came charging back and secured the top spot with a -4 fWAR.  It would be the last year he ever played in the bigs. He then bounced around the Pacific Coast League with the Hollywood Star before settling in with the White Sox A affiliate in Dallas for nearly a decade before enjoying one season as a player/manager for the Jamestown Falcons where, at 38, he was on average 18 years older than his teammates.  All the while, he was known for being a true baseball professional with a solid glove with likely the former being more accurate than the latter.

	Season	Name	Team	fWAR
1	1933	Jim Levey	Browns	-4
2	1930	Tommy Thevenow	Phillies	-3.6
3	1931	Jim Levey	Browns	-3.3
4	1997	Jose Guillen	Pirates	-3.1
5	2002	Neifi Perez	Royals	-2.9
6	1920	Ivy Griffin	Athletics	-2.8
7	1930	Fresco Thompson	Phillies	-2.7
		and 3 others
11	1993	Ruben Sierra	Athletics	-2.6
		and 3 others
15	1977	Mike Champion	Padres	-2.5
	2009	Yuniesky Betancourt	- - -
17	1973	Lou Piniella	Royals	-2.4
		and 3 others
21	2005	Bernie Williams	Yankees	-2.3
		and 5 others
27	1902	Pete Childs	Phillies	-2.2
	1960	Ken Hamlin	Athletics
29	2018	Chris Davis	Orioles	-2.1
		and 6 others

Over 80 years later, Levey may well lose his perch on top of this list.  Sitting at 29 is Chris Davis.  He currently is tied with six others for 29th worst, including the 2009 Aubrey Huff who split his time between Baltimore and Detroit.

But really, what is the likelihood of Chris Davis reaching that threshold of -4?

Seventy games remain as I write this.  I think it is fair to say that if he continues belting a home run once in a while that he will see about 60 more games.  If he does better than that, I would also reckon he gets about 60 games.  No one really is pushing him out and as some players may depart for playoff races, he will unlikely face more competition for his time.  Now, if he reverts to his pre-June 22 production, then I would imagine that 60 would turn to 40 as the club tries to figure out what to do with him while giving him multiple opportunities to succeed.

The Optimistic View

The optimistic view is one that I think is represented by ZiPS.  ZiPS looks into the players past and compares said player with historical trends.  That view of Chris Davis would be that his recent play is not a true indication of his current talent level and a rebound is expected.  That rebound would see him perform as a 204/293/406 hitter (well above his current 160/234/284 line) and net him with a 0.1 fWAR result.  That would drop Davis down a rung to 36th place with a -2.0 fWAR.  To be clear, the fortunate result is that Davis would produce a full season that would be the 36th lowest out of about 18,000 hitters who managed to play at least 100 games.  Let that sink in.

Post June 22nd World

A "rejuvenated" Chris Davis is slashing 191/253/456.  This .295 wOBA is still well below average for a first baseman and he is projected to cost his team about three runs over the rest of the season as his loss of athleticism also has meant a reduced ability to actually play first base in the field.  The scenario, over 60 games, would present him with a further decrease about 1.1 fWAR.  He would be sitting at -3.2 fWAR, good for fourth place.  He would only be beaten by the two Levey seasons and the Thevenow season.

Pre June 22nd World

Things were tough early in the season as Davis suffered a 150/227/227 line.  It would be hard to think that he could do this poorly moving on and still enjoy having his name penciled in the lineup.  I would project him as see maybe playing time in 40 games.  My calculations would have this worth about -1.6 fWAR, bringing him to -3.7 fWAR.  This would fall just short of Levey's previusly thought insurmountable -4 fWAR.

But What if Davis Now Pitched in Relief

Back in January, I looked at exactly how poorly a position player would be if he pitched regularly.  The conclusion was that an average position player would put up an ERA of 6.84.  It appears that position players with multiple outings tend to do much better than that, but lets just assume that Davis is an average relief pitcher.  At a 6.84 ERA and 70 games left, we could probably imagine Davis put in about 15 mop up innings for the rest of the season.  That would be worth about -0.2 fWAR.

Now, what if he could manage a 6.84 ERA starting.  That probably sees him put in about 10 starts and generously estimating six innings a start.  At 60 IP, he would see something around a -0.7 fWAR.  So with half a season at -2.1 fWAR while batting, what would it take to achieve that as a pitcher with a 6.84 ERA? About 250 IP.

That gives you an idea how terribly Chris Davis has done.  If Chris Davis was permitted to get clobbered for eight innings a night over 32 starts for a whole year, then he would find himself at -2.1 fWAR for the whole season, which would just barely pass the worst fWAR since 1900: -1.9 by the Senators Phil Ortega in 1965.