Reviewing the Brew’s Brewer Awards: Rookie of the Year

We here at Reviewing the Brew will be taking our own approach to the awards that are being handed out this week. That said, we are doing a Milwaukee Brewers’ themed awards type series where in the next few days, you will see who we voted on for each category during the Brewer Awards.

Today’s award is the Brewers’ Rookie of the Year which goes out to Khris Davis.

Khris Davis sprang onto the scene quickly in July and just never looked back. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski – USA Today Sports

Davis, 25, emerged onto the Brewers’ scene on the very first day of the season, but would sporadically play throughout the month of April. It wasn’t until July when Davis truly broke out as one of the Brewers’ most lethal hitters in their line-up.

Of course, if it weren’t for the suspension of Ryan Braun, Davis might not have ever won this award from us or even had much of a 2013 in general. With the Brew Crew wanting to work internally and start relying on younger guys to pick up the slack, Davis was and still is clearly going in the right direction.

During August is when Davis reaffirmed that his .300 average in July (albeit in only 10 at-bats) wasn’t just a fluke. Davis smacked a slash line of .319/.383/.653 in August alongside six homers, 15 RBIs and scored 16 runs all inside of 72 at-bats. Easily, Davis was a star in the down spiraling Brewers’ 2013 season and looks to be for many years to come.

In fact, Davis performed so well that he actually led the team in slugging percentage (.596), isolated power (.316) and in runs created plus, or wRC+ (160). Clearly Davis has the stuff to become a starter in 2014 and the trouble is just finding where to put him exactly.

Overall this season, Davis hit .279/.353/.596 with 11 homers, 27 RBIs and 27 runs scored all in 56 games played (136 at-bats). His average did fall off a bit in September and he did miss a good portion of the month due to an injury. Still, that doesn’t take away from his performance this season in which he won our Rookie of the Year, narrowly beating out teammate and second baseman Scooter Gennett. Hopefully Davis will avoid the dreaded “sophomore slump” next season and give us an even better year in 2014.