Devon Travis isn’t flying under the radar anymore.
Expectations were modest when the rookie second baseman made the Toronto Blue Jays out of spring training. He’d never played higher than double-A, and wasn’t even assured of a job until Maicer Izturis got hurt.
“We all thought he was good,” manager John Gibbons said. “We didn’t expect this.”
After 25 games, Travis ranks among the league leaders in home runs (7), hits (29), batting average (.315), on-base percentage (.388), slugging percentage (.609) and wins above replacement (1.2). It’s been a heck of a month.
“Travis has been unbelievable,” GM Alex Anthopoulos said. “He’s one of the best bats in the game right now.”
So what now? Can he keep hitting like this, or should the Blue Jays expect him to struggle?
“Is it fair to prorate that and expect him to hit 42 home runs? No,” Anthopoulos continued. “But at the end of the day he’s been great, and hopefully it continues.”
A closer look at what we’ve seen from Travis can help determine how realistic those hopes are:
He hits the ball far
Sometimes guys luck their way into home runs. Take Luis Valbuena, for example. He’s a useful player, but he’s never really been a power guy. Now he has six home runs, but he’s averaging just 362 feet per dinger, the lowest among MLB hitters with three or more homers.
Travis, on the other hand, is averaging 402 feet per homer, including a pair of absolute bombs to deep centre. You don’t hit 429-foot home runs like this unless you have some legitimate pop.
It would be ridiculous to expect big home run totals from a player who’s never hit more than 16 as a professional, so even Travis is keeping expectations in check.
“I’ve never in my life really been any type of a home run hitter,” he said. “I just go up there trying to get good pitches to hit and thankfully the ball has been leaving the yard a little bit. I’ll never consider myself a home run hitter, but it’s been definitely a lot of fun.”
But he isn’t a slap hitter. He’s showing he has the power to leave the yard. Those home runs are tremendously valuable, and as a bonus his power may force opposing outfielders to play him deeper and allow a few bloop hits to fall in.
He hits the ball hard
Travis has been squaring the ball up more than most, according to newly available batted ball data from Statcast. The 24-year-old has hit balls at an average velocity of 89 mph, which ranks 124th among the 272 hitters with at least 20 at bats.
This trend helps explain Travis’ .333 batting average on balls in play, and suggests that he’ll be able to sustain a high BABIP going forward. After all, it’s a lot harder for fielders to reach balls that are squared up.
The 13th-round draft pick batted .323 in the minor leagues and while no one would project anything close to that at the MLB level, his chances of hitting .275 seem realistic now that he’s making consistently hard contact.
He sees pitches
If it seems as though Travis has had a lot of eight or nine-pitch at bats, it’s because he has. He’s seeing an average of 4.22 pitches per plate appearance, which places him 15th among all MLB players. He’s not a big walker, with nine free passes in 103 plate appearances, but he fouls off plenty of pitches.
While Travis does strike out, striking out looking has frustrated him ever since he was a player at Florida State and his college coaches helped refine his ability to handle borderline pitches.
“They were big on ‘you don’t ever strike out looking,'” Travis said. “If a ball’s close, fight that pitch off. Don’t give the umpire the chance to make that decision. That’s something that we worked on literally every single day in college.”
Time to change expectations
Add it up and you get a player who hits the ball far, hits the ball hard and works counts. It’s an encouraging combination.
That said, Travis is in for plenty of challenges. Realizing he’s capable of turning inside fastballs around, pitchers may challenge him with breaking stuff away. Not only will pitchers have the chance to adjust, managers will presumably be more likely to call on top relievers when Travis steps in. Surely he’s going to slow down to some extent, it’s just a question of how much.
So what’s realistic?
“That’s a good question. I don’t really know,” Travis said. “My goal every at bat is to go up there, see pitches, try to see as many pitches as I can and have a good at bat. Whatever happens after that happens, but the biggest thing is hitting strikes. All hitters, we get into trouble when we start swinging at balls.”
It’s impossible to say exactly what kind of player Travis will become, but a rival scout suggests a .270-.280 average with 13-15 home runs seems realistic. That kind of production would represent a massive upgrade over what Toronto’s second basemen have offered in recent seasons and earn Travis a place in the Blue Jays’ plans for 2015 and beyond.
And he’s already surprised us once. The Blue Jays are hoping that he can do it again and sustain this all-star-level production all year.
