One year ago, the air around Chris Davis was purely negative. 

The one-time MVP candidate, home run champ and dominant offensive force was coming off a disappointing, subpar 2014 season and missed the final 17 games of the season after being suspended 25 games for a second positive test for unauthorized Adderall use. He was no longer an All-Star or the middle-of-the-order superstar he was the year before for the Baltimore Orioles.

Davis became a question mark in a baseball uniform, with nobody knowing how he would bounce back from the down season and embarrassing ban that caused him to miss the Orioles’ playoff appearance.

Now, Davis is a bat-wielding exclamation point looking for a new, or possibly familiar, uniform as he has re-established a strong market value coming off a resurgent 2015. Davis is again the game’s home run king and is being hailed by his agent, Scott Boras, as the best free-agent hitter at three different positions as he looks to cash in on a new multiyear contract far north of $100 million.

“Chris Davis grades out as the top free agent because he’s the top outfielder, the top first baseman and the top DH,” Boras told Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com. “He’s all of those. He’s three in one.”

In 2013, Davis went from good player to a bright star after he hit 53 home runs, drove in 138, had a 1.004 OPS and 168 OPS+. He struck out 199 times, but in this age of huge whiff numbers, it was hardly seen as a detriment to anything but his batting average as he still finished third in American League MVP balloting.

In 2014, much changed. Davis no longer had a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) to help him control his ADHD, and whether that was a cause or not, his production went into massive decline. He hit a respectable 26 home runs, but that total was not even half of his output the previous season. His .196 batting average was the lowest of any qualified major leaguer, his OPS dropped 300 points and his OPS+ tumbled 72 points. Then came the late-season suspension that forced Davis to miss Baltimore’s trips to the American League Division Series and Championship Series, and Opening Day of this past season.

Once Davis came back to the Orioles lineup in April, he was armed with a TUE for new ADHD medication and launched himself back onto the top tier of power hitters. He hit a major league-leading 47 homers, drove in 117, had a .923 OPS and 146 OPS+, good for 10th highest in the majors and important for Davis in his walk year.

“I thought he was going to have this kind of year all the way back to spring training,” a scout told Crasnick. “Maybe the medicine helps him stay focused in his approach. I saw him stay on balls and hit some pitches the other way, and it kind of snowballed. He looked like he was locked back in to two years ago, when he was a monster [and hit 53 home runs].”

This past season forced Davis’ market to rebound. He became a feared hitter again, and Boras’ claim that his client should be seen as a three-way positional player is not outrageous. Davis played some right field in 2015, and while he will never be mistaken for a Gold Glove outfielder, he will get to the balls he should get to and is capable enough to not hurt his club, unlike, say, Hanley Ramirez.

“I’m not a big Scott Boras guy, but I don’t disagree with that opinion,” the scout told Crasnick. “I don’t think he’s selling you a bag of beans on this one.

“Let me put it this way: Chris Davis is not Alfonso Soriano in the outfield. If an average grade is a 50, he’s a 45. And what I say about 45s is, they don’t hurt you.”

That reality could open Davis’ market more since a team could certainly stick him in right field for the first couple of years of the deal before moving him back to first base or DH. That might be part of the reason that as many as seven teams have already been linked to Davis, who will be 30 at the start of next season.

Those clubs do not even count the New York Yankees, who could take huge advantage of the left-handed Davis in Yankee Stadium, or the Boston Red Sox, who will be without the DH services of David Ortiz after next season, or the Orioles, who have said they have the money in the coffers to re-sign their slugger.

Davis’ impact comes with the downside of his strikeouts, of which he had 208 last season and leads the majors with 749 over the past four years. However, the strikeout stigma has changed in that time, and it will not stop teams from doling out nine figures for a player projected to hit 37 home runs by Marcel and 33 by Steamer, though those projections could be low depending on where Davis plays his home games.

Based on what players like Jacoby Ellsbury and Shin-Soo Choo earn, Davis topping $100 million seems like an easy call. Michael Tampellini speculates at FanGraphs that Davis will get exactly $100 million over five years, and Tim Dierkes at MLB Trade Rumors thinks six years and $144 million is possible.

However, with true power being one of the game’s most coveted tools in an age of dominant pitching, do not be shocked if Davis tops those predictions.

 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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