A's First-Round Pick Davidson Following a Family Tradition

Rookie A's shortstop Logan Davidson's dad won a World Series ring; will his son take the same path?

For Logan Davidson, everything at the A’s camp is new – sort of.

The switch-hitting shortstop was the A’s first-round pick (29 choice overall) in the draft out of Clemson last June after leading the Tigers to 35 wins and the NCAA regionals last year.

He cashed in his invite to spring training by arriving when the pitchers did rather than waiting for the reporting date of the position player. The newness of it is cool, he says.

“This is pretty awesome,” Davidson said Monday as full-team workouts opened up. “The weather is great here; it was snowing on the East Coast the week before I got here.”

As he makes his introductions and learns he way around the grounds at HoHoKam Stadium and the Lou Wolff Training Complex in Mesa, everything is a first-time experience. He's made a point to hang around veteran shortstop Marcus Semien, who has been only too glad to offer assistance with Davidson's transition.

Here’s the thing, though. Logan isn’t the first Davidson to go through a Major League Camp. His father, Matt, played in the big leagues for parts of six seasons from 1986-91 with the Twins and Astros and won a World Series ring with Minnesota in 1987.

That was a full decade before Logan was born. But he grew up around baseball and he says the fact that he’s a switch-hitter is largely due to his father’s suggestion that he might go further mastering the plate from both sides that being a right-handed-only option.

Davidson was switch-hitting at the age of 3.

“It had a huge impact,” Davidson told The San Francisco Examiner shortly after signing. “He played five, six years in the big leagues and kind of knew there were difficulties trying to hit a righty-on-righty slider. So, he kind of started me off hitting whiffle balls in the driveway from both sides.”

Even while having an inside connection, things haven’t been sugar-coated for Davidson. There were suggestions that he might have gone earlier in the first round had he not seemed to have trouble making the switch from the metal bat used collegiately to the wood bats for the Cape Cod League last year.

Here’s how MLB Pipeline’s scouting report on Davidson put it: “If scouts were convinced that Davidson will hit with wood, He’d likely [have been] the first college shortstop drafted.”

The rest of his game got high ratings, with MLB Pipeline adding that “there are no holes in the rest of Davidson’s game. He produces solid-to-plus run ties and uses his speed to steal a few bases and cover ground at shortstop. He’s tall for the position but should be able to remain there with his athleticism and strong arm.”

Once signed, Davidson had just four hits in his first 45 at-bats for short-season Vermont, before hitting well enough in his final 160 at-bats to get his season average up to .239.

The A’s continue to see lots of reasons to believe his offense will get better, and he sees it, too.

So, it’s helped that he arrived to spring training early

I’m just learning how to adapt,” he says. “You have to learn quicker than usual. You play every day here, and you don’t have those off days like in college where you can have time to work in the [batting] cages or whatever. Now you have to learn to adjust quicker.”