Trades Ten Years Later - Ike Davis to Pittsburgh
A trade that took at least six months longer than necessary.
The Names: Pittsburgh Pirates receive: Ike Davis. New York Mets receive: Zack Thornton and a player to be named later (Blake Taylor).
The Team Context: The Pittsburgh Pirates were coming off their first good season in decades. The New York Mets were reeling from revelations that their principal ownership had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, resulting in team payroll falling to a fraction of its prior levels. The vibes in each ballpark should have been pretty different, but the 2014 season was already underway, and both teams were 8-8 according to the records.
On the day of the trade, the Pirates lost another game to bring them to 8-9. A 24-year-old man named Stolmy Pimentel pitched two scoreless innings for Pittsburgh to lower his season ERA to 1.29, following nicely on the 1.93 ERA he had posted in five games as a rookie. Stolmy would give up runs in each of his next five appearances and, in total, would allow eighteen runs across the seventeen more appearances he’d make in 2014. The Mets lost as well, victims of a dominant performance from Braves starter Aaron Harang (what?) in the fourth start of his age-36 season. Harang threw seven scoreless innings despite allowing more walks than strikeouts, dropping his season ERA to 0.70 (what?). The Braves were running an outfield of Justin Upton, B.J. Upton, and noted catcher Ryan Doumit, who was slashing .105/.150/.105 in his early going with Atlanta.
The Player Context: Ike Davis broke a drought of Ikes in MLB that stretched back to 1979, when Ike Hampton had his five final plate appearances for the California Angels. Surprisingly (at least to me), none of these Ikes are actually named “Ike.” The most common given name for an Ike is Isaac (the first name of both Davis and Hampton), but we also see an Ivan, an Isaiah, a John, multiple James, an Edward, and an Alphonse. The only Ike without an alternative first name is Ike Thomas, who played the 1932 season with the Indianapolis ABCs. Given the precedent of other Ikes and the scant records on much of the 1932 ABCs roster (which includes legends of the game like “Binson?” and “Big Boy Davis?”), it seems unlikely that any baseball player is actually named Ike.
Incidentally, since Ike Davis debuted, MLB has welcomed three Isaacs into its ranks, who became the second, third, and fourth players to play as “Isaac.” I have nothing further on this topic.
Ike Davis was born in Minnesota as the son of MLB pitcher Ron Davis, who had a strong start to his career with the Yankees and then journeymanned across baseball for most of the 1980s. The Davises moved to Arizona and, with a strong coaching foundation, Ike became an amateur star, breaking the school records at Scottsdale’s Chaparral High School that had previously been set by Paul Konerko. Despite being drafted out of high school by the Rays as one of the best high school players in Arizona, Davis honored his commitment to Arizona State and was an immediately impactful two-way player, leading the Pac-10 in RBIs and making 12 starts as a pitcher in his freshman year. He eventually transitioned to close games for the Sun Devils, but continued to dominate on both sides of the diamond until he was drafted 18th overall by the New York Mets in 2008.
Davis was a full-time hitter as a professional (more on that later) and worked his way through the minors quickly. After a stop at AAA for just long enough to alter his service time calculations, Davis made his way to MLB by April of 2010 and entrenched himself quickly enough to push former first baseman Daniel Murphy out of the organization’s immediate-term plans. He had a strong enough rookie season to finish 7th in Rookie of the Year voting (he should’ve finished fourth looking back on it). After the season, Davis was identified by Mets GM Sandy Alderson as one of three players closest to “untouchable” status on the Mets, along with David Wright and Jason Bay.
Davis started strong in 2011, but suffered an ankle injury when he collided with Wright while chasing an infield pop-up. Though it was originally believed to be minor, there were conflicting reports throughout the season on whether Davis would need surgery to fix the ankle, and he ultimately didn’t play in any games after May 10. Patience was still the prevailing mood, and postseason reports suggested that the Mets still preferred to hold on to Davis and trade away Murphy or Lucas Duda instead. Duda was an especially interesting case, a defensively-limited prospect who had developed alongside Davis. Duda had been pushed to the outfield by Davis’s presence but profiled better at first base. Duda had a strong 2011 in Davis’s absence and provided our first clear indication that the Mets might have too many pieces to fit in their puzzle.
Ike Davis’s 2012 began with a valley fever diagnosis, which sapped his performance in the season’s early going. In June, the New York Times highlighted the scuffling Mets’ need for Davis to start providing power as they entered the Subway Series against the slugging Yankees. Davis spoke about his need to ignore the unsolicited advice he frequently received from random Mets fans in New York in order to keep his mind clear. But there were still personal high points, even on a team that wasn’t winning much. On July 28, Davis had a three home run game, with all three coming against Diamondbacks starter Ian Kennedy. Of course, it probably dulled the fun that all three were solo shots and they were the only runs Kennedy allowed; the Mets lost 6-3 and Davis described the incredible game in his hometown as “bittersweet, for sure.”
2012 also brought our first whispers of an Ike Davis trade. In August, Joel Sherman reported that “Not everyone in the Mets front office seems sold they can be a sustained contender moving forward with Ike Davis at first.” In September, the language got more pointed, with Davis’s attitude towards coaching and lifestyle cited as reasons for a potential trade. The organization quickly backtracked on this, temporarily silencing the issue. But amid reports that the Mets would “turn over” the roster in the 2012 offseason, Jon Heyman reported that they were asking for “a boatload” to part with Davis. Then, Lucas Duda fractured his wrist moving furniture, removing Davis from the trade market for that offseason. Alderson continued to defend Davis as a core part of the roster, saying “for us to trade a guy that has 30 home runs, we better know where the next 30 are coming from.”
Things crossed the threshold to “bad” in 2013. Another New York Times article mentioned the quantity of advice that random New Yorkers would offer to Ike Davis, summarized neatly by Davis as “people are always yelling at me.” In fairness to the random New Yorkers, Davis was playing so poorly at that point that we were a few weeks away from articles with the headline “why the Mets haven’t demoted Ike Davis yet” and a few more weeks removed from a demotion to AAA Las Vegas. Davis spent a month lighting Las Vegas on fire with a .293/.424/.667 slash line before briefly returning to the majors and then being shut down with an oblique injury. There were rumors of his non-tendering after just one arbitration year (or possibly a cut on that year’s salary). The Mets entered that winter with plans to trade Duda or Davis, probably whichever one fetched the higher trade package.
The Trade: Over the offseason, the Ike Davis trade market was reported in a way that would seemingly indicate concerted efforts by the New York Mets to manufacture a trade market. Several teams were rumored to be interested in Davis in the aggregate, with Jon Heyman naming each of the Astros, Rays, Orioles, Brewers, and Rockies as potential suitors. Despite this, most of the specifically-named teams didn’t seem to have much interest when specifically asked by their local reporters. You may note that Ike Davis never played for any of those teams.
With no success at creating a feeding frenzy, the Mets pivoted to setting arbitrary and unenforceable deadlines in hopes of creating desperation among their “definitely real” list of Ike Davis suitors. On December 11, Adam Rubin tweeted that Davis probably would remain a Met through the Winter Meetings, but would be traded before the month ended. The Ike Davis check was in the mail.
On December 13, Andy McCullough tweeted that “the Mets’ slow, steady march toward trading Ike Davis for something like a right-handed relief prospect is such a drag.” There was still more than four months to go in our journey.
On December 17, the Pirates enter the conversation as a potential suitor for the first time. But by January, the Mets had capitulated and expected to have Ike Davis as a member of their team for Spring Training 2014.
Davis showed up to spring training “a little bit shocked” to not have been traded. “It’s kind of like: article every day, except that there was no trade ever,” Davis said. I haven’t personally lived through a winter of trade speculation, but I have read entirely too many substanceless articles from 2013-14 discussing the possibility of an Ike Davis trade; he’s really not exaggerating on “every day.” But the hot stove had yet to cool down. The Pirates were still continuing to monitor the status of Davis in camp even as GM Neal Huntington said he was “confident in our internal options” of Andrew Lambo, Chris McGuinness, and Travis Ishikawa (obviously lying).
Spring training proved to be interesting, as a report that Davis “concealed” an oblique injury at the end of the 2013 season led Davis to “loudly lecture” the reporter for writing an article on the subject. In the view of Davis, baseball players are always playing with some sort of nagging pain that can signal a past or future injury – he wasn’t “concealing” an oblique injury as much as he was deeming it as something he could still perform through. This is probably an accurate manner of conceptualizing the problem that provides more useful context than the binary method of injury evaluation prevailing in baseball discussion, where a guy is either “hurt” or playing, in which case he’s “healthy.” But we have a bit of a snakebitten messenger – a week after this discourse, Davis suffered calf strains in both legs at once, requiring a walking boot for the right leg.
Following a tumultuous offseason that seemed like it absolutely needed to end with a trade of either Ike Davis or Lucas Duda, both ultimately made the Mets’ opening day roster, creating an awkward situation where Josh Satin started against lefties while Davis and Duda would divide starts against righties. The situation was not tenable and Duda seemed to have the slight edge in early season playing time, but Davis made the most of his limited opportunity. On April 5, 2014, he hit a walk-off grand slam against the Reds as a pinch hitter (his final home run as a Met). He had three more hits as a Met and quite a few more hitless plate appearances.
The saga came to a close on April 18, months or years after it began. Chris Cotillo tweeted that Ike Davis had been traded to the Pirates. Davis was excited to leave New York and get a fresh start in a Smaller Apple, telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “it was pretty negative over there for me for a little while.” Pirates fans were pretty happy with the potential upside that Davis offered, even as Mets fans had mixed emotions over the departure of a somewhat disappointing fan favorite.
But the saga wasn’t over quite yet. One of the return pieces for Davis was quickly announced as Zack Thornton, a relief “prospect” who had recently gone unprotected and undrafted in the Rule 5 Draft. He probably wasn’t discussed as a return piece until his excellent start to the season at AAA, where he had a 1.23 ERA in 7 innings. You could get excited about Zack Thornton with the proper motivation, but he was probably not a return worth waiting several months for. In short order, rumors began to swirl about the “Player To Be Named Later” affixed to the deal. While the PTBNL often refers to a minor piece that the teams don’t want to bother identifying with certainty at the time of a trade, the PTBNL construct also provided a useful loophole in situations like this. The then-active collective bargaining agreement had a rule preventing players from being traded until one year after they’re drafted, presumably to generate more early-career stability for young players. But if a team wanted to totally desecrate this early-career stability, they could do so by agreeing with a trade counterparty that the player would be named on the one-year anniversary of their draft date to finalize the trade. The net effect is an outcome that’s inefficient for all parties – the team trading away the PTBNL has to keep this guy hanging around their minor league roster for a few months, the acquiring team doesn’t get to start working with their new prospect, and the player is forced to spend critical developmental time in limbo, technically employed by an organization that has no further interest in their future.
While we wouldn’t know it until June, the unlucky PTBNL was Blake Taylor, the Pirates 2nd round pick in the 2013 Draft. After his senior year at Dana Hills High School, Taylor pitched 21 innings with the Pirates’ rookie ball affiliate in 2013. But in 2014, Taylor sat on the shelf until he could finally be “named” in June, at which point he finally joined the Mets and completed the long-awaited Ike Davis Trade.
The Results: Ike Davis’s next home run was another grand slam, also against Cincinnati, on April 21, 2014. He got off to a strong start with Pittsburgh, but harbored no ill will towards the Mets. On his return to New York, he told the New York Times that “you guys are putting too much emphasis on the Mets” and assured them that he was “not going to do anything weird to the Mets.” He went 0-for-7 in the three-game series with one walk.
The New York Times wrote a “Trades Two Months Later” article when the Mets made a trip to Pittsburgh. Davis was hitless in his first 10 at-bats of the four-game series, but went 2 for 4 in the final game to finally break through against his old team. While the Pirates won the series and enabled Davis to make comments to WFAN about finally being in an organization with a “winning mentality” (somehow referring to the Pittsburgh Pirates), the Mets had a happy consolation prize with the emergence of Lucas Duda as their full-time first baseman. Duda would go on to provide the “30 home runs” in 2014 that Sandy Alderson hoped to find in Davis’s replacement. Pretty good, especially considering that Davis was only able to provide 10 of those home runs for the Pirates and got squeezed out of his first base position when Pedro Alvarez lost his ability to play passable third base defense. Davis was designated for assignment and flipped to the Oakland Athletics for a couple hundred thousand dollars in international signing money after the 2014 season.
Blake Taylor worked his way through the Mets’ minor league system, finally earning his way onto the 40-man roster on November 4, 2019. One month later, he was traded to Houston along with Kenedy Corona (whose family was about to have a bigger 2020 than anyone could imagine) for Jake Marisnick’s final year of team control before free agency. Jake Marisnick was pretty good for the Mets in a pandemic-shortened 2020, so things worked out okay.
Zack Thornton spent three seasons as a member of the Mets’ bullpen in AAA Las Vegas, putting up strong numbers in a robust offensive environment, but never got the call to the major leagues.
The Aftermath: Davis’s offense took a further step back in Oakland and he missed time with a quad injury before his season ended with a torn hip labrum. He only hit three home runs as an A, one of which was his 81st and final MLB home run (a first-inning blast off Rockies starter David Hale in a June victory). Notably, he also made his only MLB pitching appearances, as he threw a scoreless inning in each of an April and August blowout loss. After he was non-tendered that winter, Davis signed a minor league deal with Texas, then was released in June to sign an MLB contract with the Yankees. He got 15 plate appearances as a Yankee, with the final three of his career coming in a June 19 road loss to the Twins. He singled against Ervin Santana in his final plate appearance and was on-deck when the game ended. When Mark Teixeira returned from the injured list on June 26, Davis’s time as an MLB player ended.
Davis signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers in 2017 and continued to post mediocre hitting numbers at AAA that suggested his time as a big leaguer had passed. But then, at age 30, the former Arizona State closer transitioned back to the mound and began throwing bullpens to restart his career as a pitcher. Statistically, this transition yielded just six appearances in rookie ball (5.2 innings) where he struck out six batters and walked four. Dodgers players and staff spoke glowingly about the early results from Davis on the mound. He didn’t allow any runs, which makes him a pretty excellent professional pitcher when considered in conjunction with the 2.0 scoreless innings he threw in blowouts while a member of the Oakland A’s. But the road back to MLB from rookie ball looked pretty steep at age 30, and Davis ultimately retired after the 2018 season (he didn’t seem to play any baseball during the 2018 season either).
Blake Taylor put together three seasons of solid relief work out of the Astros bullpen from 2020-2022, even as his low strikeout rate and high walk rate suggested unsustainable performance. He dealt with frequently increasing injuries and was ultimately released by the Astros in 2023 before making it back to the major leagues. Taylor signed a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers this offseason and has pitched 8.0 innings for their AAA affiliate at time of writing. He is still just 28 and is still left-handed, so he could easily have another MLB appearance left in his career. But it’s impossible to be sure – I would’ve guessed that Zack Thornton would make some MLB appearances in 2014.
Zack Thornton did not and will not have an MLB appearance, but accomplished the unique feat of teaming up with a player who he was traded for when he and Ike Davis competed on the 2017 Team Israel World Baseball Classic roster. He threw 44.2 innings for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in 2017 to close out his pitching career. Thornton began his coaching career the next season as the season-long interim head coach for Westlake High School, which raises some follow-up questions that I can’t find the answers to (he did not attend Westlake High School, for instance). He joined the college ranks after that season and has spent the last three seasons as the pitching coach at UC Davis. He did not respond to my emailed question about being interim head coach at Westlake High School, but I did not give him a reasonable amount of time to do so whatsoever.
Miscellaneous: The Mets projected rotation for 2013 somehow included R.A. Dickey, Johan Santana, Matt Harvey, Jon Niese, and Zack Wheeler (in the same season???). The Yankees pitchers in Davis’s final career game were Nathan Eovaldi, Dellin Betances, Kirby Yates, and Nick Goody (on the same team???). Detailed Reddit investigation. Ike Davis has been bitten by both a Shih Tzu and a pit bull, but still loves dogs. “The good thing is we had quick communication. They said 2.8, we said no, 3.125. They said 3, we said 3.125. They said 3.1, we said 3.125. They said 3.120, we said 3.125. That day was over and it was past the date. The next day they go, "Here's the 3.125."” A Giants fan in April 2014 who “didn’t even know” Travis Ishikawa was still playing but was a few months from knowing for sure.
April 22, 2024:
Seattle Seahawks receive: Terrell Pryor
Oakland Raiders receive: 2014 7th round pick (Jonathan Dowling selected).