A’s Review: Rajai Davis

Entering the 2010 season, the A’s figured to be a team built around their strong pitching and defense. In retrospect, that was the case for this year’s A’s team. The A’s finished with a .500 record for the first time since 2006, and showed a lot of growth and maturation for a relatively young and inexperienced squad.

The A’s signed OF Coco Crisp in the offseason with the hopes that he and fellow speedster Rajai Davis would get things done on offense and create plenty of scoring opportunities. Crisp, however, spent a majority of the first-half on the disabled-list, and Davis had a slow start. In April, Davis hit just .224/.275/.282 with one homer and 8 RBIs.

But as the A’s progressed, so did Davis’ level of play. In May, the speedy outfielder hit .314/.355/.395 with 7 RBIs. He also swiped 12 bases in that month. Davis’ best month came in July, where he hit .328/.359/.509 with two homers and 11 RBIs.

Despite lacking a very intimidating offense, the A’s remained aggressive on the base-paths all season long, and as a result, the team stole a total of 156. Once Crisp returned to the team, Davis and Crisp put on quite the show. The A’s speedsters stole a combined 82 bases (52% of the team’s total).

Prior to the start of the season, I had predicted that Davis would end up hitting around .280/.337/.389 with four homers and 48 RBIs. He ended up hitting .282/.320/.377 with 5 home runs and 52 RBIs. He also stole 50 bases this year, while I predicted him to have 51 (almost on the money on that one). While the numbers aren’t exactly what I had projected, Davis had a solid year with Oakland. The A’s will have a very crowded outfield next year, as the team is expected to pick up Crisp’s option for 2011. The A’s are projected to have Ryan Sweeney, Coco Crisp, Rajai Davis, and Chris Carter sharing time in the outfield. Davis’ speed and defense, however, should be enough to make him a valuable player for Oakland next year.