Posted on March 30, 2006 by Andrew Flynn
Doug Davis Epipany
ESPN’s Eric Karabell blogs about the danger of overlooking Doug Davis:
While trying to decide who my last of 12 keepers should be in a league that had its deadline this past weekend, I had an epiphany. I’m calling it the Doug Davis epiphany.
Who is Doug Davis? A few years ago, he was some obscure lefty with nasty — bad nasty, not what the kids say, good nasty — numbers that nobody figured would turn into a fantasy asset. I drafted this fella when he was a Texas Ranger, and he went 11-10 with a 4.45 ERA and WHIP of 1.55. I took a chance again two years later in a real deep mixed league when he was bad for Texas and worse for Toronto, and finally he wound up a Brewer. My team was in the tank by that point, so I held on to him and … lo and behold Davis was all of a sudden good, with a 2.58 ERA in eight NL starts. So I kept him.
I still have him, and I’m keeping him again. Are you aware that only four pitchers in baseball had more strikeouts than Doug Davis last season? Yep, that Doug Davis.
Davis is a lot better than people think. He doesn’t win games — or shall we say he hasn’t won games — but don’t blame him. He’s not paid to drive in runs. Davis was actually better than teammate Chris Capuano in every category that matters, including ERA and WHIP, but Capuano won 18 games. Davis won 11. It’s luck. And it could easily be reversed this season.
The point here is, there are a bunch of examples out there of players who didn’t put up the stats you think he did. Davis had more strikeouts than just about every pitcher in baseball, including Roy Oswalt, Carlos Zambrano, Roger Clemens and John Lackey. Davis had 208 Ks! Seven pitchers struck out that many hitters in 2004, but only three pitchers topped that total in 2003. So Davis deserves credit. It’s not easy to strike out 200 hitters. For one, you have to make a lot of starts. A year ago I considered him my Steve Trachsel, a guy nobody seems to want who is reliable. You know what? Davis is too good to be Trachsel!