Justin Smoak vs Ike Davis

all he is going to do is hit bombs, not much else

Smoak has had the better eye ratio stats historically. Lots of walks and fewer strikeouts. Ike has had K issues. Smoak seems like the better contact guy.

Ike seems like he has more power. He does take a walk.

In their limited major league samples the differences aren’t huge. Smoak seems to have had some bad luck, and he pressed in Seattle it seems. His K/BB there was atrocious.
Smoak’s line drive rate is much higher (22% to 15%). But his Infield fly rate is also much higher (20% to 7%). His flyball rate is slightly lower (39 to davis’s 42% about). There HR/FB rates are very similar.

In AA Ike was helped by a massive babip, but he had a much higher ISO (.153 to .256). Smoak had better averages and a huigher walk rate, and lower k rate. That advantage didn’t wuite carry over. In the majors thus far Smoak has k/bb%s of 26.8%/11.5%, Davis 27.7/11.3%. That seems about what you’d expect from Davis, not as good as you’d think for Smoak based on his minor league lines.

Smoak’s plate discipline stats don’t have the huge advantage one would think from their minor league samples, but given their k/bb, this seems logical.

Outside swing? Smoak 28.1%, Davis 28.6%. Zone swing: Davis 64.8%, Smoak 62.2%.
Overall contact rate, davis at 75.1, Smoak at 77.7%. Swinging strike rate, davis 10.2, Smoak 9.2%.

Smoak has slightly better components. He was hurt somewhat last year (I think Davis was too in 2008).

They both were a little rushed, Davis more so, because at least Smoak had 1/3rd of a seson in AAA last year. They are about the same age. davis 3 months younger, no big deal at 23.

I think they both will do better. Smoak will hit for higher averages and walk more. Davis will probably hit more homers at his peak, but Smoak may build on his power output.

It’s funny, i have them both in fantasy this year, pretty disappointing. First base has become a black hole for me. I had Konerko and dealt him after April (sell high!) for Smoak. Major mistake, although it’s a keepr league, i didn’t mean to completely punt this year. I later dealt Smoak for Ortiz because, hey, they’ll always be prospects. Davis only plays because Berkman has also been a black hole for me.

I think I like davis a bit more than most, and I like Smoak and think he’ll overall be better, but i think it’s a tad closer than people think, and I do think Ike has more isolated power. But when i tried to move him in my league no one wanted him, whereas Smoak still had takers (but he’s cheaper the way we go about keeping players, because he has more points since he’s played more and outproduced Smoak, superficially at least).

All tiny samples of course relatively. Just so no one comes back and says Smoak is way better, you’re crazy, not even worth discussing. Someone may anyway.

Davis has the higher ISO, .171 to .138.

could hit 35 in a peak year. Maybe not a better than 50% chance of it, but I think his power peak will be higher than Smoak’s. His power outage since July doesn’t help my case. The guy had 15 in his first 328 major league at-bats basically skipping AAA.