I would not be too concerned, particularly for Purke. Keep in mind that at the time they made the Purke pick, they don’t know for sure that Scheppers would be there in the suppy. One would expect that the team has budgeted enough money to sign at least their first round pick. I am sure they knew Purke’s contract demands, so if they did not have money for Purke, I imagine they would have picked someone they felt was signable. The Scheppers pick may stretch their budget a bit, but Scheppers doesn’t have great leverage, so he might consider signing for a lower amount than he wanted.

Of course, the alternative theory is that Hicks didn’t have money to sign any first round picks even at slot money, so they picked Purke and Scheppers just to prevent others from picking them, and hopes financial situation improve next year to use the Purkes comp. I am not sure if this holds any water.

At this point I am willing to try him before we deal a bunch of prospects (yes i know about the 40 and rule 5 concerns)

His numbers are awful, and he has yet to show any improvements in either plate discipline or contact ability. That said, why is he struggling so much? We know that he is not seeing the ball well at all and continues to swing at things outside the strike zone and take called 3rd strikes. He also looks overmatched at times – unable to catch up to fastballs in the strike zone. However, these two things are not always separate issues – does he look overmatched because he is not picking up the release of the pitch or is he simply incapable of catching up to a fastball?

I guess when hitter struggle for a prolonged period of time, it’s either something mechanical, something mental, or something that has to do with the ability of the player. If Davis’ problem is mechanical, then it is clearly Rudy’s fault and perhaps spending some time with a different hitting coach may help. If his problem is mental, one expect that he would snap out of it at some point in time – particularly when he gets lucky and has a couple of good games. If his problem is something to do with his abilities, then short term solutions won’t do any good.

I think most of us here believe that his problem is mechanical or mental and he may be able to snap out of it given a stint in the minors, but I always have this unsettling feeling that it may not be the case. When most players struggle at the plate, they try to adopt a more patient approach (like Murphy, and Byrd last year), and Chris Davis has tried to do the same, but it just hasn’t worked for him. He is trying to take more pitches (he has seen more pitches per PA than he had last year), but the walk rate isn’t getting any better. To me, that says he is just unable to tell what the pitch is and where it is supposed to go, even when he is adopting that approach. If this is the case, a short minor league stint won’t do any good.

This is the reason I want to keep him on the team for the remainder of the season. I want to find out exactly what his problem is and whether he is capable to making the adjustment to those problems. Major league pitchers are good at exploiting weaknesses in a hitter (much better than AAA pitchers), and don’t make as many mistake pitches. This means that Davis’ problems will be most obvious, to him, to the opposing team, to Rudy, and to the front office, and any improvements that he may manage to make will be equally obvious. I think he will perform much better if put in AA or AAA, but mostly because the pitchers are not as capable to using his weak points, and he will benefit by getting more mistake pitches to hit. If that’s the case, we may not be able to tell exactly whether he has been making any progress.

I would keep Davis here for the rest of the year, move Smoak up to AAA when he return from injury and after the ASG. Have Davis play winter ball of some kind, and monitor him through spring training. If Smoak looks ready by ST, then there is no problems. Give Davis 2 month in 2010, and if he continues to struggle, banish him to AAA and forget about him until he puts up Cruz/Botts numbers for an entire season. This way, they can either pencil Davis in as a core part of team, or they can forget about him and look at other options. I don’t want to see the Andy Marte situation here, it’ll be a pain for everyone.