Why Eric Davis isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Eric Davis was one of the most exciting players in baseball in the 1980s, and a feel-good story in the late 1990s when baseball really needed one. He looked like a future Hall of Famer when he broke into the major leagues. So why isn’t Eric Davis in the Hall of Fame?

Eric Davis: Baseball’s most exciting player

With some players, including his good friend Darryl Strawberry, the answer to why they aren’t in the Hall of Fame is complicated.

It’s a lot simpler with Eric Davis. He just lost too much playing time to injuries. He had a very intense, all-out style of play. That intensity along with his superhuman talent made him very endearing. There’s nothing more infuriating to a fan who paid a day’s wages to watch a baseball game than a player making millions of dollars a year playing lackadaisically. That’s why utility players like Rex Hudler and Joe McEwing with borderline Major League talent who play hard become fan favorites. Eric Davis was a five-tool player who played every bit as hard as the utility player who lived on the cusp of losing their spot on their roster.

The problem is, all that crashing into walls meant a trip to the disabled list almost every year. And even though he bemoaned that people criticized him for not playing hurt, his injuries tended to be serious. Serious enough to require surgery. He had 10 surgeries between 1986 and 2001. So the knock on Eric Davis for not playing hurt wasn’t fair.

The turning point

The 1990 World Series was a turning point for Eric Davis’s career. Prior to 1990, he was a perennial MVP candidate and had been in All-Star twice. But in the first inning of Game 4 of the 1990 World Series, he dove for a fly ball off Willie McGee’s bat and missed. He stayed in the game to finish the inning, but then collapsed in the dugout. He had lacerated his kidney on the play. And he was never the same player again. The talent was still there, but he went from averaging 131 games per season to averaging 86 games per season after the injury.

Averaging fewer than 131 games per season makes it really hard to make the Hall of Fame, as Fred Lynn or Jack Clark can tell you.

A late career renaissance

Davis even retired following the 1994 season on the advice of his doctors. But he came out of retirement in 1996, deciding he wasn’t quite done at age 32. Then, in 1997, while playing for the Baltimore Orioles, he felt a pain in his abdomen. It turned out to be colon cancer. He still found a way to play while undergoing treatment, winning the Roberto Clemente and Tony Conigliaro awards for his courage playing baseball while undergoing chemotherapy.

Cancer-free in 1998, he had his last great season, getting into 131 games for the first time in 5 years and avoiding the disabled list for the full season. One of the reasons for this was because Baltimore used him as a DH in 54 games.

He signed one last big money contract, a two-year deal worth nearly $8 million, with the St. Louis Cardinals following the 1998 season. But injuries limited him to 58 games in the first year of his contract. He returned in 2000 as a part-time player, DHing in interleague play and appearing 23 times as a pinch hitter. Davis wrapped up his career with a single season in San Francisco in a similar role.

Eric Davis’ Hall of Fame case

Davis didn’t get much Hall of Fame consideration, getting eliminated from consideration in his first year of eligibility. He only received three votes, the same as Dante Bichette and one fewer than the always controversial Jose Canseco.

What he accomplished in the 1626 games he was able to play indicates he had Hall of Fame talent. But to get the numbers that would have made him a no-doubt Hall of Famer, he probably needed to play another 800 games.

How Eric Davis’ career could have been different

Eric Davis was the perfect player for a 1980s National League team. During that decade, the National League was full of large open-air stadiums designed to accommodate both football and baseball, with spacious outfields and artificial turf. He had enough speed to steal 40 or more bases and cover those huge center fields, and he had enough power to hit 40 home runs even in those oversized stadiums. The catch was that he would need to stay healthy enough to play 150 or so games to do it. His career high for games played in a single season was 135, in 1988.

Saving Eric Davis’ career by underutilizing him

Baltimore had the right idea when they used him as a DH 1/3 of the time in 1998. If Detroit had the same idea in 1993, it could have transformed Davis’s career. He was a gold glove outfielder, so DHing him was a waste of his abilities. But he had a hard time playing 100 games in the field when he was a full-time outfielder. DHing part of the time still allowed him to get about 80 games in the field. While the DH role kept him from contributing on the field, he contributed even less when he was hurt.

The point is partly moot because he played 13 of his 17 seasons in the National League, which didn’t have the DH at all until 1997, and even then only in interleague play. Cincinnati played him at first base one time in his career, in 1996. Playing him at first base is also a waste of his ability, but it right we reduced the likelihood of him crashing into walls. And at 6’2″, he would have been tall enough to play first base regularly.

Spending less time in the outfield might have given Davis a path to getting into another 800 games. And if he hadn’t been playing left field in Game 4 of the 1990 World Series, he wouldn’t have lacerated his kidney. Playing him at first base underutilized his abilities, but it wasn’t unprecedented. In 1984, the Cardinals regularly deployed fleet-footed David Green at first base. And from 1992 to 1997, the fleet-footed Dave Martinez played first base about 1/3 of the time for the Reds and White Sox, and he was only 5’10”.

Why Eric Davis isn’t in the Hall of Fame, in conclusion

It’s unfortunate that Eric Davis is mostly remembered today as an injury-prone player who had Hall of Fame potential and didn’t pan out. His courage in defeating cancer while still managing to play Major League Baseball is what he really deserves to be remembered for. It also proves that the knock on him for not playing hurt wasn’t fair. He played 42 games in 1998, with either a baseball-sized tumor in his colon or while undergoing chemotherapy, and he hit .304 while doing it.