New York Mets first baseman Ike Davis had a disastrous 2013 season. He played in just 103 games, hit just .205/.326/.334 with only nine home runs in the majors, earned a midseason vacation to AAA Las Vegas, and saw his season end in August followed a strained oblique. While talking to Mike Puma of the New York Post over the weekend, Davis revealed that the oblique had been bothering him for most of the year, and that he didn't want to use it as an excuse for his struggles.
“It makes me look like a baby,” Davis said. “It looks like I’m whining about how I [stunk]. I was terrible, now it’s over.”
On Monday, Davis took exception with Puma's column that insinuated that he was using the oblique as an excuse for his struggles.
"You made it look like an excuse," Davis added, directly addressing the article's author. "It's an excuse. It shouldn't have been a story anyway. … It's just an overblown thing. Everyone has injuries and then they get hurt. So it was pointless to write an article. I sucked last year because I sucked. It's not because I had an injury. You always have injuries. And now it just looks bad."
Quick tip for Mr. Davis – if an injury is bothering you, maybe you should immediately speak up. No one is going to question how much of a gamer you are if you have a strained oblique – it's tough to swing a bat with that injury. Hell, just ask Chipper Jones, who suffered (at least) nine different oblique strains during his MLB career.
But yes Ike, you did suck last year, and the degree to which you did was stunning. The only first baseman with at least 300 plate appearances to have a worse OPS than your .660 mark was Yuniesky Betancourt, a middle infielder that was miscast as a first baseman for parts of the 2013 season because of Milwaukee's disastrous injury situation at the position. And hey, even Yuni had more homers than Davis' nine.
While Davis did have a terrible 2013 season, he did vastly improve after getting called back up from AAA. Four of his nine homers came in 170 plate appearances in July and August, and over those two months, he hit .267/.429/.443 with more walks than strikeouts. Before his demotion, Davis hit a pathetic .161/.242/.258 in 207 plate appearances with 19 walks and 66 strikeouts. If Davis can be more like his post-Vegas self in 2014, maybe he could finally tap into his immense potential.
