{"id":2962,"date":"2017-01-04T02:46:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T07:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=2962"},"modified":"2017-01-04T02:46:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T07:46:40","slug":"oakland-athletics-sign-rajai-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2017\/01\/04\/oakland-athletics-sign-rajai-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Athletics Sign Rajai Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Oakland Athletics signed speedy outfielder <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/davisra01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rajai Davis<\/a><\/strong> to a one-year deal late Tuesday night. The deal was first reported by Jeff Passan of YAHOO!\u00a0Sports on Twitter, and is worth $6 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Source: Rajai Davis and the Oakland A&#8217;s are in agreement on a one-year deal for $6M.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/816450268778942464\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 4, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Oakland Athletics Sign Rajai Davis<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>This is a reunion for the two sides, as Davis played in Oakland from 2008-2010. He set a career high with 50 stolen bases in 2010. The fleet-footed 36-year-old is currently fifth in steals among all active players, with 365.<\/p>\n<p>Davis spent last year with the Cleveland Indians in a soft-platoon role with rookie lefty center fielder <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/n\/naquity01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tyler Naquin<\/a><\/strong>. He batted .249\/.306\/.388 with 43 steals and a career-high 12 homers. His eighth-inning homer off then-Chicago Cubs closer <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/chapmar01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aroldis Chapman<\/a><\/strong> in game seven of the World Series ranked as one of the most iconic moments of the postseason.<\/p>\n<p>For 2017, Davis joins an Athletics squad in need of\u00a0a true center fielder after trading <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/burnsbi02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Billy Burns<\/a><\/strong> to the Kansas City Royals last July for power-hitting corner outfielder <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/eibnebr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brett Eibner<\/a><\/strong>. He will be embarking on his 12th\u00a0big-league season.<\/p>\n<p>Davis has never been much of a threat with his bat, and likely won&#8217;t become one in his return to the Bay Area. He has hit above .300 for a season just once (2009), and has finished with a batting average of .260 or worse in five of the past six seasons. In addition, 2016 was the\u00a0first double-digit home run season of his career.<\/p>\n<p>However, when he gets on base, he&#8217;s as dangerous as anyone in baseball. Davis stole at least 34 bases in seven of his past eight campaigns. As Oakland finished with the fifth-fewest steals in the league as a team last season, Davis will be a welcome addition.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/621661144\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/621661144?et=bMlI1oUFTJt7HMg9EZXD9g&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=uupCvYMZG26TU9196pQVgQe5m7diwaQpn12BB-kirt8=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oakland Athletics signed speedy outfielder Rajai Davis to a one-year deal late Tuesday night. The deal was first reported by Jeff Passan of YAHOO!\u00a0Sports on Twitter, and is worth $6 million. Source: Rajai Davis and the Oakland A&#8217;s are in agreement on a one-year deal for $6M. \u2014 Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 4, 2017 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":2963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,35],"tags":[68,69,283,565],"class_list":["post-2962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-news","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-oakland-athletics","tag-rajai-davis"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}