With Henry Davis, The Pirates Must not Waste This Offseason

8-19-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

The rest of 2023 is important too of course, but let’s be real, it’s not worth anything if they don’t learn from it, identify what they need to improve, and ultimately, do so.

When you watch a young player like Henry Davis come up and experience both the heights of looking every bit the part of 1:1 savior followed quickly by either the latest guy to be “ruined” or if you’re fair, the latest to have the league push back and try to purge yet another youngster from the ranks.

That’s what this is with Henry.

It’s easy to blame Andy Haines for everything that happens with the hitters, hell, you’ve all seen me do it plenty this year, but that’s not all that’s happening with Davis folks and to simplify it to that, is to ignore both the realities of how very much Davis is trying to learn at the highest level of the sport, and how much hands on instruction Haines actually does.

Don’t get me wrong here, Haines isn’t helping him either, I’m simply claiming what you’re seeing with Henry, has more to do with a youngster getting punched in the mouth, his weaknesses being exposed and exploited, along with far too many things for a kid to try to focus on at this level to actually be good at any of them.

Even that isn’t entirely because the Pirates did anything in particular wrong with him. They caught him in the minors because they have genuine belief that he can do it. They didn’t prepare him with enough reps in right field to ensure he’d be serviceable because quite honestly once they realized the bat was leaving them no choice, the move to the outfield was seen as a much more plausible path to get him in the lineup during 2023.

It was reactionary, but the alternative was to bench Andrew McCutchen and hit Henry as the new everyday DH. This is an athletic kid, with the potential to probably hold down whatever they decide to do with him, but one doesn’t just go from not playing anywhere in which you are actually facing a batter to now reading the ball off the bat, playing angles, understanding coverage responsibilities for backups and where to throw in all situations.

The way it’s going right now, you have to start wondering if this is best for Henry.

When they called him up, I honestly don’t think he gave them much choice. The bat was so explosive, still is when he makes contact, but that has now turned into a situation where what he did can’t work because he’s too busy trying to defend against what MLB has finally figured out as the best way to get him out.

I mean, look where he’s being pitched.

This is not what was done in the minors. Wasn’t really what he faced when he first came to MLB. This is the pattern the league has settled into to get Henry out at this level. His first problem was up and in fastballs, it led him to countless hit by pitches and eventually a ton of super hard contact as he learned to turn on it.

Guess what you have trouble with once you start realizing you have to protect the down and away all the time.

Now take a look at what Henry does with mistakes. Meaning when a pitcher tries like hell to hit that outside corner down and they miss, well, Hank feeds.

Point is, Henry is adjusting, and when he does ultimately find a way to overcome this, the league will again start focusing on another path. For instance, check out that down and in portion of the zone, especially in off the plate.

Here’s another issue. He is reaching those outer half pitches and putting up really solid exit velocities.

That’s fine, so long as you don’t do this with it when you do.

Exit velocity, almost entirely derived from going outside, rolling over and grounding or lining out to the left side of the infield.

To beat them, he’ll have to learn to hit those pitches to the right side more often.

This is a dance, one that almost all promising youngsters face, honestly, one that most youngsters have at least started to deal with in the minors.

Every year we cry for these kids to just come up and we act like the minors don’t matter. We act like they don’t need to face adversity down there, we suppose that if they’re hitting .355 in AAA, of course it will translate to MLB exactly the same way.

It rarely does.

Then we call them busts, or ruined prospects. We start proposing trades for them and dire predictions for their ultimate failure to produce find them on the outside looking in for every projection of the future team follow quickly.

Nick Gonzales just came up to MLB and did exactly what he has done. Hit the ball hard, then went cold and struck out. Now he’s back in AAA pounding the ball, making adjustments and eventually he’ll be brought back and given a chance to show those adjustments have stuck.

That’s how this works.

Now, the Pirates, loaded to the gills with kids, must understand they don’t have what this many children, in need of maintenance and guidance through this adjustment period, can’t just be left to one guy who hasn’t even experienced much success helping veterans, let alone kids.

It’s too much to expect of all the kids, it’s too much to expect of a good hitting coach, you know, supposing they had one.

They need a team of hitting mechanics, and they need to abandon their stubborn need to turn everyone into the same type of hitter. This philosophy can make average to below average players better, but at the same time is stunts or at least slows the growth of players with higher ceilings.

They’ve done well to amass all these talented players, but if they don’t recognize their trouble transitioning them to MLB players and make changes, they’re going to piss away years that should be productive and probably give up on some guys who they will ultimately regret losing.

Henry will be fine, he’s too talented not to, but to make Henry the best he can be, this team must do what they ask all these kids to do.

Grow.