The long and short of it is that the Orioles need to re-sign 1B Chris Davis, and barring a massive drop in his market value, such a contract would almost certainly be the biggest free agent outlay in franchise history. But if the rest of the league is sane, and if Baltimore is willing to spend at least as much on him as they were on centerfielder Adam Jones, who along with Davis and Manny Machado forms the core of the Orioles’ offense, that’s something they can pull off.
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First, the bad news for the Orioles: there aren’t many 1B hitting the market this offseason, and of the ones that are, Davis is the clear standout. He was an MVP contender in 2013, had a down year in 2014, and one of the best second halves in baseball this year brought his three-year line to an .891 OPS (140 OPS+). The biggest competition he has positionally (unless someone sells Justin Upton on the idea of moving to first base, which really shouldn’t be an issue at all) is Mike Napoli, a guy with known injury concerns and is himself a .792 OPS (116 OPS+) hitter over that same timespan. After Napoli, the only other guy who rates serious mention is Justin Morneau with a .796 OPS (112 OPS+, due to Coors). Frankly, if the Orioles don’t want to pay Davis and don’t have faith in Christian Walker, Morneau might be the guy they end up with — unless they do something like throw a lot of money at Daniel Murphy, which…well, Jonathan Schoop deserves another year at 2B, and a lot of the shine comes off Murphy’s bat at 1B/LF.
But the bad news — that Davis is pretty much alone as a 1B commodity on the market right now, and can even sneak into the OF discussion as a bat-first player who can rotate between RF and 1B (and DH, on an American League team) — is mitigated by a couple things. First, the outfield market is crowded to the gills at the premium tier, with Alex Gordon, Jason Heyward, and the aforementioned Justin Upton all looking for new deals, along with Ben Zobrist and Yoenis Cespedes both looking to capitalize on great ends to their seasons (and being great, worthwhile players in their own right). Combined with his general lack of playing time and the fact that he doesn’t move around that well out in right — and despite his cannon of an arm — it’s likely any deal for Davis will keep him at moving between 1B and DH, primarily.
The second thing is the qualifying offer. I don’t think this will actually be that significant a factor — I think Davis has been good enough the past three years (and has a convincing enough explanation for his off-year in 2014 due to the prescription medication issue) that he’s past the threshold where teams will hesitate to pursue him due to the draft pick. But still, recall that the top ten teams in the next draft have their first round picks protected — signing Davis would require only their second round pick. Thankfully for the Orioles, all of those teams either an incumbent first baseman (White Sox, Reds, Braves, Tigers, Padres) or are unlikely to be big-ticket spenders in general for either financial or contention-cycle reasons (Brewers, Athletics, Marlins, Phillies, Rockies). The Padres could decide to replace Yonder Alonso or the ownerships of the Rockies or Marlins could decide to make a splash with Davis in the offseason, but those scenarios seem unlikely.
The third factor is that there simply don’t appear to be that many great landing spots for Davis outside of Baltimore at the moment (pending any early offseason trades, of course), and the ones that do exist not only don’t have protected picks, but all have some sort of question mark that might take them out of the process: specifically, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Seattle Mariners, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cleveland Indians, the Toronto Blue Jays, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Boston Red Sox could all use Davis’s services, but the last two are likely the only ones who deserve special consideration. For our purposes, we’re going to assume a 5 year/$100m contract guaranteed for Davis, and ignore the possibility of additional option years for now.
The Rays, Mariners, and Pirates are all included mainly as a formality: Davis would be a huge upgrade over the production James Loney, Logan Morrison, and Pedro Alvarez offered their respective teams this year, but the Rays and Pirates simply do not ink deals like the one that would be required to land Davis and the new Mariners FO has inherited a payroll that has reached its tolerance for big AAV deals to position players, especially over the short-term. The Pirates and Mariners still have Morrison and Alvarez going through arbitration, and while both are far from ideal, they’re serviceable in the short term — and any upgrades would likely have to cost as much or less than the guy being replaced.
The Indians and Jays are two teams linked somewhat at the hip right now by executive Mark Shapiro, who took his spendthrift ways north to Toronto this offseason. The Indians have a lot of money coming off the books — a payroll of $87 million this year only has $46 million in commitments for 2016, though there will be some arbitration raises in order — and even though they already have a first baseman in Carlos Santana, he struggled mightily at the plate last year and might do better in a full-time DH role. If playing time is an issue with Santana, the Indians are weak enough in the corners as it is that Davis could see time in RF across from Brantley in LF to give Santana a game every week at first base without much of an issue. In the end, though, the posited $20m AAV of Davis’s deal is probably just too much of the budget for the Indians to sink into one player, especially with them hoping that Brantley/Kipnis/Lindor will be a core of hitters they only need to complement, not supplant.
The Jays have an opening tailor-made for Davis: they have a lineup that needs left-handed bats, and Chris Davis is an upgrade in every conceivable fashion over Justin Smoak. Unfortunately for the Jays, the Mark Shapiro hire indicates that Rogers is looking to do more with less — the team will likely draw down payroll now that they’ve garnered substantial fan interest and try to make next year a very profitable one. The Jays have money coming off the books, but assuming Rogers invests that money back into the team, Shapiro will have to spend it on a starting rotation that needs three new arms and some qualified depth if the Jays are looking to repeat their 2015 achievements. And if they’re not looking to do that, then they’re not going to be interested in Chris Davis anyway.
Which brings us to the two scariest contenders for Davis’s services: the Cardinals and the Red Sox. The Cardinals’ 1B tandem of Mark Reynolds and Matt Adams can’t continue — Adams had a horrific year, and Reynolds hasn’t been a legitimate starter for a couple seasons now. Davis would be a fantastic fit for the club as one of its core hitters, Matt Holliday, ages out of his prime, and they could use the HR power Davis brings from the left side. The good news: the Cardinals might be at their saturation point with big contracts right now, and if not probably only have room for one more — meaning if they were to pursue Davis, it would be because Jason Heyward and Alex Gordon slipped away. The bad news: if you look at Cardinals payrolls, they go up over time. St. Louis’s ownership is content to escalate their payroll along with revenues, and they spend like a smart, successful member of the sport’s upper third tier of teams. With the new national contract in full swing, could this be the year St. Louis decides to go from a $120 million payroll to $140 million or $150 million? Probably not, but it could happen.
Which brings us to the Red Sox. The Red Sox shouldn’t be the scariest contender for Davis; after all, they’ve made a lot of noise publically about transitioning Hanley Ramirez to first base. Two problems with that: the first is that the guy running Boston right now isn’t the guy who inked Hanley Ramirez to that deal. That guy, Ben Cherington, quit. The second is that the guy running Boston now is Dave Dombrowski. There is nobody in baseball, not Billy Beane, not Theo Epstein, there is nobody in baseball better at talking other teams into bad trades than Dave Dombrowski. If Dombrowski does not want Hanley Ramirez on the Red Sox, he will find a way to move him, and will eat less money than you’d hope he would to do so. And signing Chris Davis not only dovetails nicely with the way Dombrowski likes to build his teams — he’s a fan of big free agent deals with known-quality, proven MLB players — but it simultaneously turns one of the biggest thorns in the Red Sox side into something that works for them. And frankly, if they’re going to give a first round pick to anyone, why not the Orioles? Baltimore’s shown no demonstrable ability to make the Red Sox regret that deal. Especially if they draft another pitcher.
The calculus changes if the bottom falls out of Davis’s market, of course — then a feeding frenzy could set in — but I don’t think that will happen. The Orioles have more than enough space to sign Davis to fair market value in terms of length and dollar amount; it would just mean slapping the qualifying offer on Wei-Yin Chen and Matt Wieters, then bidding them farewell (neither man will under any circumstances accept the QO; like Davis, both are represented by Scott Boras). The only reason not to ink Davis is ideological, or philosophical if you prefer: that it makes the team less flexible by tying down a lot of money in one player, restricting future theoretical moves the team could make down the line.
We’ve seen that flexibility at work over the past year when the Orioles let Cruz and Markakis walk, then filled up that space in the budget with a motley band of lesser, specialty players, gambling on upside. It didn’t win baseball games in 2015. I’m guessing it won’t do too much better in 2016. And the concept doesn’t need to be abandoned entirely; the Orioles will still have money to play around with after inking Davis to a long-term deal. But barring some team deciding to hand Davis a Robinson Cano deal, there’s no excuse for Davis to be playing anywhere but Baltimore next season. No team in the league needs him more than the O’s do.
Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.