Chicago Cubs: Getting to know new Cub, Zach Davies

What should Cubs fans expect from Davies in 2021? Could he be Cub long-term?

As perhaps one of the more underrated pitchers in baseball, the addition of Zach Davies’ to the roster isn’t flashy, but he’ll likely post a stat line that Chicago Cubs fans will be plenty happy about.

Davies’ first five years at the big league level were pretty consistent. He established himself as a durable starter without much strikeout game, and that pretty severely limited his upside. That was until 2020.

Pre-2020, Davies had a career 16.8 percent strikeout rate, allowed 9.05 hits per nine innings, and posted a career 3.91 ERA and 4.22 FIP. In 2020, he put those numbers to shame, posting a 22.8 percent strikeout rate, allowing 7.14 hits per nine innings, and posted a 2.73 ERA and 3.88 FIP.

So which of those is the real Zach Davies? Probably neither.

It’s pretty safe to predict Davies’ 2021 stat line will land somewhere between last year’s breakout campaign and his pre-2020 numbers, but there’s also reason to hope that last year’s improvements could be sustainable.

As previously discussed, Davies made some pitch selection changes in 2020 that surely had a lot to do with the big strides he made on the field. Analyzing the numbers behind his breakout doesn’t point to a pitcher who just hit a hot streak of 12 starts that happened to encapsulate his entire 2020 season, they point to a pitcher who made meaningful changes that should lead to repeatable results.

In 2021, I’m expecting Davies to be a mid-threes ERA pitcher with a strikeout rate of around 20 percent. I buy into a lot of the changes he made last season and think they’ll continue to make him a better pitcher than he was in Milwaukee.

For what it’s worth, a lot of projection systems disagree.

ZiPS predicts Davies to finish the season 8-11 with a 5.27 ERA and 5.25 FIP. Those numbers would both be career worsts for the 28-year-old righty, but ZiPS also routinely discounts pitchers of his type.

For instance, ZiPS also predicts Kyle Hendricks to have a career-worst ERA and FIP. The bottom line is that ZiPS – and a lot of other projection systems – just doesn’t like soft-tossing control artists like Hendricks and Davies, so don’t be too scared by seeing projection systems discounting those two.

Davies should be in store for a solid season in Wrigleyville, and it may be his only one. He’s signed to a one-year, $8.63 million contract after which he’ll become a free agent.

If Davies’ 2021 season is even close to as successful as his 2020 season was, I expect the Cubs to look to bring him back for 2022 and beyond, especially with Hendricks and Trevor Williams being the only proven MLB starters signed past this year.