Bleacher Bums Forum

I'm a little concerned Brennen is shaping up to be another three true outcomes sort. 

When reb was talking the other day about how Hoyer thinks he's got a much better system than Theo perceived himself to be inheriting when he came in, that prompted me to wonder about how Davis compares to Brett Jackson at that time.  Jackson didn't work out, obviously, but I think at the time there was considerable optimism that he'd be a core skeleton piece moving forward.  For their stats: 
*Davis, baseball ref lists this as his age-21 season, begun in high-A, continued in AA.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=davis-014bre
*Jackson, check out his 2010 age-21 season, begun in high-A, continued in AA:  https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jacksbr01.shtml

Jackson's K rate 21.7% vs 29.0% for Brennen, with K/BB of 1.6 versus 2.4 for Davis. 

Almost the same OPS (.888 Jackson versus .884), thanks to higher OBP; Davis's slugging is slightly higher, .510 versus .493.

Jackson projected as a safe plus center fielder.  Davis will likely move to a corner. 

Davis's K-rates are worse than Jackson, but otherwise very similar stats-lines.

Not identical, of course. 
1.  Jackson hadn't had the benefit of the South Bend instructional camp facing top-end pitchers; nor the disadvantage of having a no-real-games Covid year. 
2.  K-rates are obviously higher everywhere now.  So not sure 29% now is actually any worse than Jackson's 21.7% then. 
3.  I think Davis has already shown more HR power, and projects more for future, than Jackson did at the same time.
4.  I think the latter explains why Davis has been getting widespread top-40 prospect rankings; I don't recall Jackson ever being quite that high. 
5.  It's possible that while Davis has worse K-rates, that perhaps there are structure factors to his swing that cause scouts to be less concerned about his contact-vulnerability that may hypothetically have been true with jackson? 

Stats aside, even if Davis/Jackson seem very similar at this particular point, that doesn't at all mean that Davis will follow Jackson's subsequent trajectory.  Certainly it's possible.  But age 21 was Jackson's peak.  After that, Jackson just got worse; hopefully Davis will improve.  Once Jackson hit the majors his vulnerabilities were fully exposed, his adjustments made things worse, and his confidence fractured. 

Hopefully Davis will get better and will be a big success.