Last night, I had the opportunity to watch the Cal State Fullerton Titans take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Stillwater, Oklahoma as part of the first regional round of the College World Series. OSU womped Cal State and the top seeded Cowboys are poised to win the pool and move on the Super Regional against the winner of the Covallis regional next week. However, the thing that stood out most to me was how much better Cal State’s right fielder/ 3 hitter was than anyone else of the field.
Scouts and fans alike will tell you that sometimes the ball just sounds different when it comes off a certain player’s bat. That when that guy hits it, he does so with so much more authority and force that it looks like he’s playing a different game than everybody else.
JD Davis is one of those guys.
Davis is the best player on one of college baseball’s best teams. The Titans are a recognized baseball powerhouse, producing such notable alums as Mark Kotsay, Phil Nevin, Ricky Romero, Mike Lamb, Aaron Rowand, Vinnie Pastano, Kurt Suzuki, Justin Turner, Khris Davis, and many more and JD Davis is potentially the next big former Titan in the pros. This season, he hit .342 with 6 homers, leading Cal State in hits, average, at bats, doubles, triples, homers, walks, on base percentage and slugging percentage and is second on the team in runs and RBIs. For good measure, he’s also 7 for 7 on stolen base attempts.
Prior to this season, Davis played last summer in the Cape Cod league in Massachusetts, the best and best known summer collegiate league in the country and was honored as an All Star and All Star game MVP. He has, so to speak, a phenomenal baseball resume.
I, of course, didn’t know any of this last night when watching him. I later found out that he had hit the game winning, 8th inning, 2 out, go ahead grand slam the night before, but when Davis stepped up 3rd in the bottom of the first all I knew was the he looked like he knew what he was doing in the box.
In his first AB, against a righty with a good slider whose fastball topped out at about 88, Davis hit a missile to right field right at the fielder for an out. The ball was scorched though and sounded different than the previous hitters’ contact, a harbinger of things to come.
In his second trip, Davis, a right handed hitter, again went to right. This time though, he hit a line drive that carried all the way to the wall to the left of the 330 sign and smashed into it so hard that it made a loud thud. I cannot remember the last time I saw a ball hit the outfield wall on a line like that. Usually, balls of the wall are flies that glance off or scrape the wall as they fall by, this one, though, seemed just as likely to go right through the padding as bounce off of it. The fact that this was to Davis’ opposite field made it all the more astounding. Davis ended up with a double.
JD’s third at bat was just as instructive. As I recall, he swung at the fist pitch and flew out to left. There were quite a few fly outs yesterday and a few of them to left center where Davis hit his ball but nothing like this. Off the bat, it was obvious Davis missed solid contact, he’d hit it off the end and gotten under it. Unlike the other flies I saw, however, this one didn’t settle nicely into the fielder’s mitt. Davis’ ball just kept going up, even as he jogged head down to first knowing it would be caught. It hung in the air as the left fielder kept going back. It was, by a wide margin, the highest ball hit yesterday, I believe it cleared the lights illuminating the field and ended up on the warning track out by the 378 sign. Just a lazy fly but so much bigger than anybody else’s.
His fourth time up, the Titans were down 9-1. In this AB, still against the same OSU starter, Davis hit a ball right at the shortstop. Thing is, this one hop liner was hit so hard that the poor kid didn’t even have time to react before the ball went right past him and on into center. Other than Davis’ earlier double to right, this was the hardest ball hit all day.
One of the most impressive things about Davis’ ABs was that they were all quick. He wasn’t up there battling and waiting for his pitch. He swung and made contact early in the count, evidence of just how much better he was than the pitcher. He didn’t have to wait for something he could handle, he could handle everything.
According to Kieth Law, Davis is a likely second rounder in the upcoming MLB draft. Keep and eye out for him and hope he ends up in your favorite team’s farm system. He’s the real deal.
-Max Frankel
Oh by the way, Davis also threw 19.1 innings in relief this year, earning 6 saves and a 2.79 ERA
