J.D. Davis is as good as the Yankees can do, for now

After enjoying a relatively clean bill of health over the season’s first couple of months, the injury bug has finally hit the Yankees. First, it was Clarke Schmidt bowing out of the rotation, before injuries came for pitching staff’s backend, with Ian Hamilton, Nick Burdi, and Cody Poteet all hitting the IL. Now, the lineup is feeling the squeeze, as Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo have hit the shelf.

The Yankees were forced to look externally after all the pitching injuries, importing the likes of Tim Hill and Phil Bickford, and the story is the same on the position player side, with yesterday’s acquisition of infielder J.D. Davis. The 31-year-old Davis had been designated for assignment by the A’s last week, after hitting an uninspiring .236/.304/.366 across 135 plate appearances in wake of his unceremonious spring DFA by the Giants.

As inauspicious as it may seem to be relying on castoffs from a lowly Oakland squad, Davis is about as good as the Yankees can do right now. Jasson Domínguez’s untimely oblique injury leaves them with no obvious internal candidate to replace Stanton, and Oswald Peraza’s poor play in the minors similarly leaves them with no quality options to make appearances at the infield corners. Davis can step into both of these opportunities for now, bridging the gap until the Trade Deadline, when the Yankees can make a more committal decision about how to shape their lineup for the rest of the season. More MLB teams will be willing to engage in negotiations at that point, too.

Davis is a limited player, but one whose limits don’t prevent him from being a reasonable fit on this Yankees roster. He’s a bat-first player, one who’s played some outfield in his career but is exclusively a corner-infield type at this point. Davis has almost always graded out poorly as a defender, by both metrics and the eye test, but he can at least handle third and first base in a reasonably professional manner.

Ultimately, Davis’ acquisition will be judged on whether he can add some depth to a Yankee lineup that’s running about four or five deep right now. Davis’ line with Oakland equated to a middling 98 wRC+, though the projections paint a more optimistic picture. ZiPS tenders a positive forecast: a .240/.324/.397 line and a 112 wRC+. That’s right in line with Davis’ career norms, which come out to a 113 wRC+ over 634 games. That level of offense, combined with Davis’ brand of below-average defense, makes for a roughly average player.

The Yankees would sign up for that level of offense in a heartbeat, with the 82 wRC+ they’ve gotten from corner infielders this year ranking 26th in baseball. The question becomes: Can the Yankees expect Davis to hit his projection, or was there something in his run with Oakland that indicates he’s started to go off a cliff in his early-30’s?

Davis’ time with the A’s amounts to a small sample, but we can still dig through it to see if he showed any signs of a significant physical drop-off. One place I like to start is with plate discipline, as an aging player whose reaction time is slowing will likely be making worse and worse decisions at the plate.

There’s a lot going on here, but the takeaway is straightforward. Neither Davis’ chase rate (O-swing%) nor his swinging strike rate have shot up this year, and his in-zone contact rate is stable. Davis has run a career-low walk rate this season, but his plate discipline figures suggest that has more to do with small-sample wonkiness, and perhaps pitchers throwing him more pitches in the zone, than any huge regression in plate approach.

We can also check under the hood at Davis’ Statcast profile to look for any glaring physical deficiencies. His sprint speed has fallen from 25.8 ft/s to 25.4 ft/s, a small erosion but far from a sudden collapse. He’s retained the ability to make solid contact, his hard-hit rate right in line with last season, though his average exit velocity has fallen slightly.

This could be a useful spot to check MLB’s new bat tracking data. We can’t compare Davis’ bat speed to previous years, but we can at least check in to see how he currently compares to the league.

That dark blue curve represents Davis’ swings, and as is evident, the vast majority of his swings come in harder than league average. This doesn’t mean that Davis is some great hitter; his fast swing rate (defined as a swing greater than 75 mph) is actually slightly below league average. But we can at least rest assured that Davis hasn’t suddenly seen his bat speed completely sapped as he’s aged.

In all, Davis’ small-sample struggles in Oakland look like just that: a small sample. While he doesn’t profile as any sort of world-beater, Davis’ physical profile looks fine, in line with recent seasons. This doesn’t mean he’s a lock to return to his career averages, but the most likely path here is that Davis is a fine hitter with defensive warts going forward.

And that should be OK for now. The Yankees can deploy him tactically, using him often against southpaws (he has a solid .779 career OPS against lefties), and pulling him for a more capable defensive sub when the situation calls for it.

Getting a better player that fit better at his juncture just wasn’t feasible. Luis Arráez to the Padres weirdness aside, teams don’t actively start buying and selling until much closer to the Trade Deadline, particularly in the modern MLB landscape that sees nearly every team in some state of pseudo-contention.

The Yankees can reasonably hope for modest production from Davis for the next month or so, and then reevaluate. They can monitor Rizzo and Stanton’s timetables, assess DJ LeMahieu’s level of cookedness, gauge Ben Rice’s readiness, and then make a call at the deadline about whether they want to upgrade further. Davis should provide some stability while all those evaluations take place, at a time when it’s not easy to grab a vaguely competent veteran and plug him into the lineup. In a perfect world, Davis won’t be much of a factor come playoff time, but instead will be a useful piece that helps the Yankees bridge the gap.