Ryan Romano: Looking at Chris Davis' two big adjustments

As players get older, they have to tweak their game to remain elite. For pitchers, this often entails working on a new off-speed pitch or refining command -- to paraphrase a famous expression, they change from throwers into pitchers. Hitters don't always evolve dramatically, but they often shake things up once the years start coming. In the first season of at least seven more with the Orioles, and at age 30, Chris Davis has done exactly that.

This offseason, Davis looked like a bit of a risky investment. FanGraphs.com' Dave Cameron deemed him the biggest landmine on the free-agent market. "One trick ponies aren't so much fun when the trick stops working," Cameron wrote, and that line of thinking made sense. Davis was an aggressive hitter -- for his career, he'd swung at 35.9 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, one of the highest rates in the major leagues. Players with extreme strikeout tendencies need to take enough walks to make up for it, and Davis hadn't been able to accomplish that. His results when making contact didn't inspire much faith, either. At FOXSports.com, Jeff Sullivan noted that Davis had pulled the ball a lot in recent years; by 2015, he ranked second in the majors in pull rate. Predictability, along with a lack of discipline, makes for a pretty shaky profile to pour $161 million into. Did the Orioles choose correctly?

Thirty-six games into the 2016 season, it sure looks like they did. Davis hasn't missed a beat this year, batting a cool .262/.368/.504. FanGraphs projects him to finish the year with 41 home runs, and unless he hits the disabled list, he'll get there. Beyond that, though, the changes he's undergone have made him a well-rounded hitter and a potential force at the plate for years to come. Cutting down on his chases and distributing the ball more evenly, Davis has found an approach that will allow him to age gracefully.

Across his 155 plate appearances, Davis has taken 22 walks, only one of them intentional. His 14.2 percent free pass rate is the highest of his career, and it hasn't gone unnoticed -- last month, Jon Meoli of the Baltimore Sun wrote an entire article on Davis's plate discipline. The slugger told Meoli: "I'm not going to stop swinging, but I think if I can start swinging at better pitches, better quality pitches, it's going to be more beneficial not only to me but to my teammates." And while Davis still swings pretty frequently, he doesn't hack like he used to. His O-Swing rate has fallen to 28.7 percent, which ranks 90th among 191 qualifiers. Improving to middle-of-the-pack in this regard has allowed Davis to capitalize on his clout: Since most pitchers avoid him, he now racks up the bases on balls. In the future, as Davis hits for less power, he'll see his zone rate rise; if he can maintain this patience, his on-base percentage should stay respectable.

On top of all that, Davis has rediscovered his opposite-field stroke. His pull rate has fallen from 55.9 percent last year to 43.0 percent this year. The latter mark does rank 62nd in baseball -- Davis still prefers to hit the ball to right -- but the fact that it doesn't come close to leading the league is a huge positive for Davis. Back when he exploded in 2013, Davis clobbered the ball everywhere, with 42 extra-base hits to the pull field, 28 up the middle, and 25 the opposite way. Last season, he had a mere 12 extra-base hits to left field; this season, he's already tallied five. The shift can devastate a pull-happy hitter, as Davis saw in 2014, so this adjustment should work in his favor. Once Davis stops hitting the snot out of the ball, which hasn't yet happened, he'll need an even approach at the plate. By the way his performance has trended in 2016, he seems to have found one.

Davis has never had issues staying healthy -- a minor oblique strain in early 2014 is his worst injury -- so he should age well. Nevertheless, he can't hurt himself by taking some precautions. The overly aggressive, shift-vulnerable Davis wouldn't have accomplished much in his late 30s; this version should stick around. To further bastardize the old saying, Davis is no longer a swinger, he's a hitter. To this point, it looks like the Orioles invested wisely.

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.