Chris Davis is a very rich man.
The Longview product who spent his first few professional seasons as a part of the Rangers organization signed a seven-year, $161 million deal with his current team, the Baltimore Orioles, over the weekend to end his free agency after a pretty intense back-and-forth with the club.
That's elite money, and you can make a pretty solid case that Davis is an elite player, especially when it comes to power — something the Rangers lack and have lacked for a few years now.
Davis led all of baseball last year with 47 home runs and he also drove in 117 runs, and he now has 126 home runs in his last three seasons. That's elite power.
It makes you wonder if the Rangers let something special slip away when they traded him to the Baltimore Orioles at the 2011 trade deadline in what could possibly be the worst trade — on paper, anyway — in the tenure of Rangers GM Jon Daniels.
Daniels shipped Davis and starting pitcher Tommy Hunter to the Orioles for elite relief pitcher Koji Uehara. Davis turned into Davis, and Hunter became a very good late-inning reliever, even having some time at closer. Uehara never lived up to expectations in Texas and even failed to make the postseason roster.
It's a tough deal on paper, but it's hard to imagine Davis succeeding like this as a Ranger. You really get the impression that Davis was a true "change-of-scenery" guy that just needed to escape the pressure of playing in front of his hometown fans.
