Chris Davis 2019 and beyond

[Number5]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

I’d love to know which voices were advocating for Davis.   Buck?   Brady?   Both?    Someone else?

I find it interesting that Walters went public with this.   Did he do that on his own initiative?    Did Duquette ask him to do it?    I’m a little surprised he wasn’t subject to a non-disclosure agreement.    Maybe he was, but ignored it.

 

He's probably trying to save his professional reputation.  He was economic adviser to the Baltimore Orioles when they signed the worst contract in history.  He needs to get it out there that the signing was very much against his recommendation and advice.  The man needs to be able to find work.

[Ridgway22]

1 hour ago, atomic said:

Trumbo was not DD and instead others in organization having Angelo's ear.

i would dearly love to read a DD book if it contained an honest account of just what the h*ll went on during PA's last years in charge. Would be a must read for this O's fan.

[atomic]

26 minutes ago, Ridgway22 said:

i would dearly love to read a DD book if it contained an honest account of just what the h*ll went on during PA's last years in charge. Would be a must read for this O's fan.

Yeah from the last year of Andy Macphail to last year of DD would be pretty interesting story to all baseball fans.

[esmd]

9 hours ago, TonySoprano said:

As for me,  I'm not going to continue to kick someone who is this far down.  If you think these guys don't internalize failure like this, remember why  Mike Flanagan died.   I like what Curt Schilling said yesterday, "Every single person in your life is a hitting coach."  In other words, everybody he runs into outside of the ballpark is offering him unsolicited advice about how to fix this.   Guys who played the game get this and none of them is offering anything but sympathy. 

 

This.  I've thought of Flanagan several times when considering Davis' struggles.  People can say he's got $100M+ reasons to be happy, but I have to believe the guy is absolutely miserable.  I'm legitimately concerned for his mental well being.

[GuidoSarducci]

9 hours ago, El Gordo said:

Consecutive hitless at-bats, all-time (per Elias Sports Bureau)

Chris Davis, Orioles, 49, 2018-19

Eugenio Velez, Giants/Dodgers, 46, 2010-11

Bill Bergen, Superbas (Dodgers), 45, 1909

Dave Campbell, Padres/Cardinals/Astros, 45, 1973

Craig Counsell, Brewers, 45, 2011

Hitless plate appearances, all-time (Per STATS)

Tony Bernazard, Indians, 57, 1984

Chris Davis, Orioles, 56, 2018-19

Eugenio Velez, Giants/Dodgers, 52, 2010-11

Justin Ruggiano, Marlins, 51, 2013

Robin Ventura, White Sox, 51, 1990

Craig Counsell, Brewers, 50, 2011

Todd Zeile, Orioles/Dodgers, 50, 1996-97

Dann Howitt, A's/Mariners,

The next PA! History! A record that will stand as long as Ripkens's.! Sorry Cal.

Someone should do a photoshop of Davis breaking through a "56" banner ala Dimaggio hit streak. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

4 minutes ago, GuidoSarducci said:

Someone should do a photoshop of Davis breaking through a "56" banner ala Dimaggio hit streak. 

[atomic]

1 hour ago, esmd said:

This.  I've thought of Flanagan several times when considering Davis' struggles.  People can say he's got $100M+ reasons to be happy, but I have to believe the guy is absolutely miserable.  I'm legitimately concerned for his mental well being.

Didnt Flanagan have money issues?  He wasnt getting paid by MASN like he thought he would. If I remember correctly.

[Going Underground]

7 hours ago, atomic said:

Didnt Flanagan have money issues?  He wasnt getting paid by MASN like he thought he would. If I remember correctly.

I think that would be the simple answer. He had a side that took him to a bad place and I guess that day could not get out of the shadows.

Did you ever notice Mike when he came off the mound after a good inning?" asks Alex Flanagan, widow of the Orioles Hall-of-Famer who committed suicide a year ago. "He always had his head down."

 

Maybe it was modesty, or a taciturn manner he'd picked up in his native New England. But maybe Mike was sullen and full of doubt, too.

"Most people won't believe it," says Alex, in her first interview since her husband's death, "but I don't think Mike ever believed in himself. He felt like a failure. And there were times when he hated himself and felt that he was a fake, that he had just been lucky. ... He was self-effacing in his humor, that was part of his charm, but that was a cover for insecurity."

He had financial pressures, she says, in part from a lapse of steady income between jobs as the Orioles' vice president for baseball operations and as color commentator on game telecasts, that caused him to dip deeply into savings and into his player pension. He expressed resentment about the way he was treated after he lost his front-office job in 2008. He asked if I wanted to write a book about "the demise of a great baseball franchise," then put the idea on hold after he started working as an Orioles broadcaster again in 2010.

Those issues, money pressures and career disappointments, were the explanations that trickled out in the immediate aftermath of Mike's death. But they seemed too simple.

"The public wanted a reason why Mike killed himself," Alex says. "They wanted accountability and to blame something or someone. They needed a reason for an unreasonable act, and I understand because I've gone through all these questions myself."

Absent what she calls "a definitive answer to an impossible question," Alex shares observations about Mike, hoping they provide missing details. First and foremost, she says, he was depressed, and for a long time.

"He used to talk about shadows," she says in the den of the farmhouse, a couple of dogs and some packing crates nearby. "He would say, 'Sometimes there's this shadow that comes into my life,' and he wouldn't see anything good, just these shadows. ... He would see the world in black and white, without color."

She says Mike saw a psychiatrist for 20 years, but wonders whether he and his doctor were ever able to identify the source of the shadows.

 

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-xpm-2012-08-18-bs-md-rodricks-flanagan-20120818-story.html

[Going Underground]

Another nice article by Dave Sheinin:

Just after 3 p.m. Tuesday, some four hours before first pitch, Chris Davis emerged from the Baltimore Orioles’ dugout and stepped into an empty stadium. He wore workout clothes, a backward cap and white-framed shades. He was trailed by a half-dozen coaches and technicians.

For the next 20 minutes or so, he took batting practice alone in the sun, standing in the left-handed batter’s box and ripping line drives to left and center field. A high-speed Edgertronic camera set up behind the cage recorded the swings, and Davis would pause occasionally to peer into a laptop operated by one of the team’s young analysts. An orange extension cord ran from the electronic gear to an outlet in the camera well near the dugout.

The Orioles have a mess on their hands that may have no real precedent in baseball history: a $161 million hitter who can no longer hit, a franchise-cornerstone slugger who can no longer slug — a player who is too unproductive to trade, too expensive to release, too tenured to send to the minors without his consent and too healthy, prideful and accustomed to guaranteed yearly salaries of $23 million to walk away. At stake is the $92 million still owed to Davis over the next four years. (Because of deferred money in Davis’s contract, the remaining payments are actually valued at $84.4 million in present-day dollars.)

The Orioles got in their current predicament — economists would call the remaining value of Davis’s deal a sunk cost — because owner Peter Angelos made an emotional decision in the winter of 2015-16 to go several years and tens of millions of dollars beyond the recommendation of his front office, and signed Davis, who reached free agency after the 2015 season, to the longest and richest contract in franchise history.

 

The Orioles could approach Davis about accepting a minor league assignment, as a way to escape the pressure and scrutiny of trying to fix himself at the big league level — perhaps with a defined length of, say, two weeks — but they know Davis and agent Scott Boras are unlikely to agree. Last year, the New York Mets made a similar proposal to another struggling Boras client, Mets pitcher Matt Harvey, and Harvey refused. Soon after, they released him, swallowing the $4.6 million still owed him.

It’s a far different case, however, when the player’s release is going to cost $92 million, which is nearly 2½ times the record amount of money any team in history has swallowed in termination pay.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/chris-davis-cant-hit-but-the-orioles-have-little-choice-but-to-keep-playing-him/2019/04/09/afe0dbe4-5ae1-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?utm_term=.2c1de29999cb

[Chromehill]

Davis is not going to accept a minor league assignment for the simple fact that he may not hit any better down there.  Ego wise he cannot take that chance.  He is striking out nearly half his plate appearances, he is done.  Probably as much mental as physical at this point.  At least keeping him around allows the typical fan to say "I can do as good as him", when compared to Davis there is a lot of truth in that, the average guy in the stands really could not play much worse than he is right now. 

Sadly with Flanagan, he was one of those individuals who dealt with demons (real or imagined) his whole life and could never overcome it.  For most of us who are healthy, it makes no sense, but is very real to the person dealing with depression. 

[maybenxtyr]

53 minutes ago, Going Underground said:

I think that would be the simple answer. He had a side that took him to a bad place and I guess that day could not get out of the shadows.

Did you ever notice Mike when he came off the mound after a good inning?" asks Alex Flanagan, widow of the Orioles Hall-of-Famer who committed suicide a year ago. "He always had his head down."

 

Maybe it was modesty, or a taciturn manner he'd picked up in his native New England. But maybe Mike was sullen and full of doubt, too.

"Most people won't believe it," says Alex, in her first interview since her husband's death, "but I don't think Mike ever believed in himself. He felt like a failure. And there were times when he hated himself and felt that he was a fake, that he had just been lucky. ... He was self-effacing in his humor, that was part of his charm, but that was a cover for insecurity."

He had financial pressures, she says, in part from a lapse of steady income between jobs as the Orioles' vice president for baseball operations and as color commentator on game telecasts, that caused him to dip deeply into savings and into his player pension. He expressed resentment about the way he was treated after he lost his front-office job in 2008. He asked if I wanted to write a book about "the demise of a great baseball franchise," then put the idea on hold after he started working as an Orioles broadcaster again in 2010.

Those issues, money pressures and career disappointments, were the explanations that trickled out in the immediate aftermath of Mike's death. But they seemed too simple.

"The public wanted a reason why Mike killed himself," Alex says. "They wanted accountability and to blame something or someone. They needed a reason for an unreasonable act, and I understand because I've gone through all these questions myself."

Absent what she calls "a definitive answer to an impossible question," Alex shares observations about Mike, hoping they provide missing details. First and foremost, she says, he was depressed, and for a long time.

"He used to talk about shadows," she says in the den of the farmhouse, a couple of dogs and some packing crates nearby. "He would say, 'Sometimes there's this shadow that comes into my life,' and he wouldn't see anything good, just these shadows. ... He would see the world in black and white, without color."

She says Mike saw a psychiatrist for 20 years, but wonders whether he and his doctor were ever able to identify the source of the shadows.

 

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-xpm-2012-08-18-bs-md-rodricks-flanagan-20120818-story.html

This stuff is very real..not that many doubt it. Money and success do not take it away long term. They do mask the underlying issues, but only for so long. 

[Aglets]

15 hours ago, Frobby said:

I’d love to know which voices were advocating for Davis.   Buck?   Brady?   Both?    Someone else?

I find it interesting that Walters went public with this.   Did he do that on his own initiative?    Did Duquette ask him to do it?    I’m a little surprised he wasn’t subject to a non-disclosure agreement.    Maybe he was, but ignored it.

 

Dan has said in public interviews (perhaps even when he was still GM?  at the very end) that it was Peter Angelos.  Seems that others are confirming Dan's account.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Going Underground said:

Another nice article by Dave Sheinin:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/chris-davis-cant-hit-but-the-orioles-have-little-choice-but-to-keep-playing-him/2019/04/09/afe0dbe4-5ae1-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?utm_term=.2c1de29999cb

The paragraph I thought was most interesting was this one:

Quote

The guaranteed nature of baseball contracts makes any conversation about a negotiated buyout — the Orioles, say, agreeing to write Davis a check for $46 million, half of his remaining contract, to retire and walk away — a non-starter, according to officials from the Major League Baseball Players Association, which would have to approve such a deal and would never agree to such a precedent-setting move.

I've heard it speculated that the MLBPA would have to approve such a deal, and I've heard others say that the union has no say in it.   This is the first time I've seen anything stating that union officials have said they would have to approve such a deal and that it would be a non-starter.    If correct, then those of you who were hoping we could wear Davis down and embarrass him into a buy-out are going to be sorely disappointed.    I've always thought that was very unlikely anyway.

[Frobby]

22 minutes ago, Aglets said:

Dan has said in public interviews (perhaps even when he was still GM?  at the very end) that it was Peter Angelos.  Seems that others are confirming Dan's account.

I do not believe Dan has ever said anything publicly about this.

[Aglets]

16 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I do not believe Dan has ever said anything publicly about this.

Totally fine.   I can't find the interview or quotes right now but I do distinctly remember him using the words "ownership decision" to describe that contract at one point.  Maybe someone else can dig it up.