Chris Davis' Potential Return to Orioles Would Be ALCS Distraction

It is desperation time for the Baltimore Orioles.

They are 27 outs away from their season ending, and they need a spark. They need something to get them going in the opposite direction, something to assure their next two games extend the American League Championship Series out of Kansas City and back to Baltimore.

What they don’t need is Chris Davis returning from his 25-game suspension at the expense of someone already on the Orioles’ ALCS roster. Davis’ suspension for violating the league’s drug policy after a second positive test for banned amphetamines can be completed if Baltimore extends its series against the Royals to a sixth game back at Camden Yards, but manager Buck Showalter has shown little inclination that Davis is a real option.

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Showalter says #Orioles did not come close to adding Chris Davis to LCS roster.#OriolesTalk

— Rich Dubroff (@RichDubroffCSN) October 10, 2014"

According to the roster rules, the only way Davis could be brought on at this point is if the Orioles have an injury to a player already on the ALCS roster, and even then it would likely have to be a position player who was ailing for Davis to be a realistic option. But at this point, we are quite a ways away from Game 6, considering the Orioles are down 3-0 in the best-of-seven series with two more games to play in Kansas City before then.

Also, consider this: If Davis is eligible to play in this series, it would mean the Orioles had won Games 4 and 5. If that is the situation and no position player is seriously injured, disrupting the team’s mojo after two consecutive wins would be ammunition for tons of second-guessing and more of a distraction than anything.

Beyond that, Davis’ production during the regular season makes him nothing more than an all-or-nothing kind of hitter who has come up with nothing a lot more than all during 525 plate appearances. Davis struck out 173 times, the third-highest total in the AL, and he didn’t even play after Sept. 10. He had a .196/.300/.404 slash line with a 98 OPS-plus, making him a slightly below-average hitter. His 26 home runs are solid, but they are a long way off from the 53 he hit last year.

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Furthermore, Davis hit .133 (2-for-15) against the Royals this season. And in case the Orioles would consider him as a late-inning pinch hitter when a home run might change the game, Davis is 1-for-6 with three strikeouts against Kansas City’s seventh-inning specialist Kelvin Herrera and 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against closer Greg Holland. Davis has had some success against setup man Wade Davis, going 2-for-5 against him, but the two did not face each other in 2014.

Davis played part of his suspension in the fall instructional league to stay sharp and has taken batting practice with the Orioles during this series, but that is a long way from facing dominant relievers who throw upper-90s heat in high-leverage situations. Throwing Davis into that kind of situation after having not played for more than a month, well, that would just be incredibly crazy because the hitter would be at a clear disadvantage.

There are certainly reasons to just let sleeping dogs lie and not bother adding Davis if this ALCS gets to that point. Then again, Showalter did leave the door cracked before the series started.

“That would be…Game 6 [that he could come back],” Showalter told The Baltimore Sun after announcing the team would not save a place on the roster for Davis. “We’re not going to play at 24 [players] for five games. But then if we’re fortunate enough to continue to play, we’ll readdress it.”

Showalter is right. The Orioles should address this if they are somehow able to reach Game 6. Maybe someone has an injury serious enough that Davis looks like a viable option to keep in Showalter’s back pocket. Beyond that, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to add him to the roster and invite all the questions it would bring into the clubhouse.

At that point, the story should be about the Orioles fighting their way back into the series, not about how the team feels about Davis’ return.

The way the Royals are rolling, however, Davis might never be an option. If the Royals sweep the series, Davis’ suspension would carry into the first game of next season and all of this will be a non-issue.

Then again, this has been an improbable postseason thus far. If the Orioles can find some magic over the next two days, Davis is an option the team will explore, for better or worse.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.