Rajai Davis?!?

When the Matt Morris trade went down, most Pirate blogger types hated the move for the specific reason that it involved us acquiring Matt Morris. Actually, we laughed at the ill-informed national media (Jayson Stark and the like) that bemoaned the fact that the Pirates were giving up a "real prospect" to acquire Morris. After all, if we Pirate fans know anything, it's that minor league numbers can be misleading.

And here we are, less than two weeks later, wondering who the Giants actually acquired from us in return for Morris. The guy that hit three doubles and one triple in rather limited duty with us over the past two years has hit three doubles and one triple in nine games with the Giants. Yeah, I'm confused about the whole thing, too. So where is this Rajai coming from? What's the explanation? I have come up with two viable theories.

Theory #1- Rajai Davis is in his Chris Duffy stage. We all know what it's like to be fooled by a speedy outfielder that hits for high average and shows surprising power late in the season. In fact, the very guy that I liked to compare Davis to, Chris Duffy, did that all the time. Every Pirate fan has been fooled by Duffy at least once and maybe twice, so why couldn't Giants fans (and, by extension, us) be fooled by Davis? We're looking at a sample size of 27 plate appearances here. If those PAs weren't taking place right in the Bonds spotlight and against us, we would barely even notice.

Theory #2- Rajai Davis is better than we thought. In his seven career minor league seasons, Davis has an OBP of .375. Sure, it's helped by his .305 average, but clearly there is some plate patience there. In the lower levels of the minors he actually drew a walk in less than every 10 plate appearances and while those numbers dropped in AA and AAA, they didn't drop precipitously. And the fact that he's fast as hell was never in doubt. Cory thinks that maybe the Pirates should've, you know, coached Davis a bit to try and get him to hit the ball on the ground more and use that speed to his advantage.

The bottom line on Davis is that he's old for a guy just getting started in the bigs (he turns 27 in October) and that he'll never hit for much power or be a very good fielder (one look at him in center last night confirms that). It's more than likely that his hot start with the Giants is little more than a flash in the pan, but it's possible that he might be more than the poor man's Chris Duffy that we all had him pegged for.