Time for Khris to Get His Krush Back

Khris Davis lost his job as the A's cleanup hitter last year. He's healthy again, and the Athletics are best served when he's back batting fourth, going deep and fueling the offense

The A’s first lineup for the Cactus League season, for Saturday against the Cubs at Sloan Park, didn’t have Khris Davis in it. Mark Canha was the cleanup hitter.

Nothing odd there for a game in which the starters were due to get one, maybe two plate trips. The club says he's dealing with a minor calf issue, but he's due to get his first start Tuesday.

So it will be in Peoria, against the Padres that the A's will begin this what-to-do-with-Khris thing.

The A’s cleanup hitter for 289 of the 324 games played in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, Davis had a nasty about-face last year. Between being injured and last year’s injury and subsequent offensive swoon, he was the cleanup hitter for just 78 starts, less than half a season.

Cactus League games for Davis will in large part showing that his swing is back and that he should be back batting cleanup. He won’t go so far as to say that, but the fact is Oakland’s best offense seems to come from a lineup where Davis bats fourth as the DH.

Davis doesn’t play defense often these days, but last year in Pittsburgh he ran into a wall trying to make a catch of a foul ball headed into the stands. It changed his season. For one, his recovery was tricky. He was back in the lineup after two days off, but then needed another four days off after that.

Once he was finally back to playing daily on May 12, he wasn’t the same. The 2018 MLB home run champ had gone deep 10 times in April. The next month was a blank before his May 5 injury, then on May 13 he went deep twice against Seattle.

It would be 25 days before he’d go deep again, and he’d finish the season with just 23 bombs – good for many players but a pittance for someone with Davis’ power. There was a two-month stretch from June 19 to Aug. 22 when he hit just one homer over the course of 44 games.

Along the way, the found himself demoted to the No. 5 spot in the rotation and then the No. 6 slot, where he’d get 29 starts, and then to No. 7 (eight starts).

Canha was a quality replacement; he had 44 games (40 starts) at cleanup, went .298/.431/.543 with nine homers. He might be a cleanup hitter down the line. But heading into 2020, his credentials seem to have him batting fifth or sixth.

He understood, but he knew he was hurting, that his body wasn’t letting him perform. That is no longer the case. He says he feels fantastic, which should have the A’s feeling all the more pumped about 2020.

“This is no doubt a bounce-back season for me,” Davis told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I had a rough season last year. I wouldn’t say it was all because of the injury, but I expect to regain my form this year.”

And being the cleanup hitter means Davis has “a tremendous amount of weight to carry.”

Melvin and hitting coach Darren Bush saw how Davis had to alter his swing last year. They are doing what they can to make sure those bad habits of 2019 are purged.

And they are optimistic Davis will be able to shoulder that weight again.

Cleanup, anyone?