TCN 2025 St. Louis Cardinals Prospect #10 – Chase Davis

photo: Chase Davis (Brian Walton/The Cardinal Nation)

The Cardinal Nation’s Top 50 prospect countdown for 2025 reaches no. 10 with the Cardinals’ 2023 first rounder. After an eventful second half, outfielder Chase Davis is poised for a big run at Double-A. Free report!

Chase Davis

Position: Outfielder
Age: 23 years old
Bats/Throws: L/L
Height/Weight: 6’1, 231 pounds

Acquired: Selected in the first round, 21st overall, of the 2023 First-Year Player Draft
Hometown: Sacramento, California
College: University of Arizona

Opened 2024: Palm Beach Cardinals (Class-A)
Primary team in 2024: Palm Beach Cardinals (Class-A)
Finished 2024: Springfield Cardinals (Double-A)

Prior Top 50 rankings – 2024 #13

Click on the above photo to be taken to Davis’s player page at The Cardinal Nation, with additional biography and history information.

2024 highlights

PA AVG OBP SLG OPS HR SB CS BB% K% BABIP wRC+
475 0.252 0.349 0.417 0.766 12 9 2 11.8% 23.8% 0.317 119

Link to Davis’s career stats

Blake Newberry’s scouting report

Blake’s ranking – no. 10

(current grade/future grade)

Hit Power Run Arm Field FV
35/45 40/60 50/50 60/60 40/50 45

Chase Davis is still coming into his own as a prospect and working to show his raw tools more consistently but 2024 was still a huge year for him. His stats won’t yet show him to be the power-oriented bat that he projects to be and that’s because he’s still learning how to tap into his raw power consistently.

He only clubbed 12 home runs in 2024, but he did it across three levels while cutting down on his swing and miss from 2023 and striking out at increasingly smaller rates as he climbed the organizational ladder. That makes 2024 a hugely successful season for Davis relative to his first year in the system and it gives him a platform on which to build going into the 2025 campaign.

Power is still Davis’s calling card as his exit velocity has maxed out at 111.7 mph and there’s likely more in the tank. He can struggle to find the barrel consistently and some of that is likely a result of his near-constant swing tinkering in 2024.

Davis has difficulty consistently elevating the ball at times, which again, is likely a result of him adjusting his swing to find what works best for him. This can make it a bit of a challenge to evaluate Davis as a hitter, but I firmly believe there is more in-game power in his tank and the strides he has made with his hit tool are encouraging.

Davis still projects as more of a fringe average pure hitter than an average one but that’s okay since he should have enough pop to carry his profile. He also projects to make enough contact to tap into his power with some consistency, so he just needs to work on making square contact more often. He tends to mishit balls, especially fastballs, that he should crush. There is also some swing and miss against changeups and breaking balls, so he is still working on refining that part of his game.

On the positive side, Davis makes good swing decisions and is generally a patient hitter, so he projects to draw walks at a strong clip going forward. He also hits lefties well, posting a .734 OPS vs. lefties compared to a .777 OPS vs. righties in 2024. There was little increase in whiffs against lefties and he also hit for decent power against them, which is encouraging.

Defensively, Davis has split his time between center field and left field. While he has solid athleticism, he probably fits best in a corner spot and probably right field where his plus arm can be more of an asset. Still, there is no rush to move Davis out of center while he can still play it at a decent level.

Overall, Davis has a lot of tools with good athleticism paired with good power, a strong arm, and a patient approach at the plate. He is still working to bring all his tools together but made good progress in 2024 and has even more room to grow.

Summary: Chase Davis is a power-driven prospect with a ton of tools who started to put things together in 2024 after tweaking his swing.

Brian Walton’s environmental impact report

Brian’s ranking – no. 8

Background

Entering the 2020 draft, the veteran of the showcase circuit was the 55th ranked overall prospect (per Baseball America) and the number nine high schooler in the country (according to Perfect Game). However, Davis was not swayed by informal offers that reportedly may have approached $1 million. As a result, the California native was unselected in the pandemic-shortened five-round draft and headed to the University of Arizona.

Davis received limited playing time as a freshman in 2021 on a veteran-laden Wildcats squad that advanced to the College World Series. He slashed .233/.343/.400/.743 in 35 plate appearances over 27 games.

That summer in the Northwoods League, Davis slashed .207/.359/.405/.764, hit four long balls and plated 19 in 145 plate appearances.

For the 2022 Wildcats, Davis was the regular starter in left field and slashed .289/.414/.583/.997 with 13 doubles, a team-leading 18 home runs, 54 RBI and 56 runs scored in 62 games. He struck out at a 22.8% rate with a strong walk rate of 16.6%. His club advanced to the NCAA Regional finals before elimination.

In the summer of 2022, he participated in Team USA trials and in the Cape Cod League prospect showcase. Davis again did not hit for average or power with the wood bat, slashing .212/.379/.250/.629 in 66 plate appearances over 15 games. He fanned at a 24.2% rate and walked at a great 19.7% rate in the Cape.

In 2023, as a junior back in Tucson, the consensus preseason All-American put it all together. He led the Wildcats in batting average (.362), on-base percentage (.489), slugging percentage (.742), runs (71), home runs (21) and walks (43) while starting in 57 games. Davis’s 21 home runs tied for first among all Pac-12 hitters and is the third-most in a season in school history.  His 39 career home runs are third all-time among Wildcats.

Chase Davis (Mike Christy/Arizona Athletics)

Compared to 2022, he raised his batting average 73 points, lowered his strikeout rate from 22.8% to a career-best 14.4% and had more walks (43, 15.5% rate) than strikeouts (40). Davis reached base safely in 55 of his 57 games, including a streak of 45 games to open the season. His OPS increased from a strong .997 in 2022 to an exceptional 1.231.

In the post-season, he shined, named the Pac-12 tournament’s Most Valuable Player with a tourney-high 12 RBI in four games. Davis was also selected to the Pac-12 All-Conference Team and was a second-team All-American per the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) and the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA).

Prior to his junior year, Davis had made changes to his swing that reduced his strikeout rate by 33% as noted above while increasing his contact rate from a below average 68% in 2022 to 80% in 2023 (per Baseball America).

Davis was a very important selection for the Cardinals because at 21st overall, he was their only pick in the first 89 spots in the 2023 draft. That was due to the forfeiture of their second rounder for the signing of free agent Willson Contreras.

Davis was the only college hitter selected with the Cardinals’ first pick since Randy Flores became scouting director (excluding Scott Hurst, their third rounder in the Houston penalty draft of 2017).

Davis received his slot value of $3,618,200 to sign. To underline its significance, that represented just under 60% of the organization’s spending allocation in the 2023 draft. Davis was MLB Pipeline’s no. 22 draft-eligible prospect coming in and 28th per Baseball America, so the pick was certainly not considered a reach.

Long considered a feast or famine hitter, Davis’s Palm Beach debut was heavy on the famine side.

Whether it was fatigue brought on by the extended season, the wood bat, better pitching, trying too hard to impress or something else, Davis struggled to gain traction in his first professional action. In 34 Florida State League contests, his slash line of .212/.366/.269/.636, which included just six doubles and no home runs, was very similar to his results in the Cape the summer prior.

Palm Beach manager Gary Kendall put Davis in the middle of his lineup, but felt the left-handed hitter was being too cautious, taking pitches and looking for walks in RBI situations.

Though Davis’s walk rate was a career high 19.1% with the Beach Birds, so was his K rate of 26.0%.

2024 recap

Based on his 2023 debut, sending Davis back to the Florida State League to open 2024 seemed almost certain, and it did come to pass following STEP Camp and minor league spring training. However, no one predicted how we would play up to and beyond the level of his Class-A league.

Davis’s April was relatively quiet (.726 OPS) before he really, really struggled in May (.440). Right on the heels of that low point came his career highlight to date. He broke out with an exceptional June (1.147 OPS) that culminated in Florida State League Player of the Month honors and system-wide Player of the Month recognition by both the Cardinals organization and The Cardinal Nation.

I asked Kendall what changed for Davis.

“A lot of it was being a little bit more focused, more attentive to his pre-game drills,” Palm Beach’s manager said. “Willi (hitting coach Martin), Russ (hitting coordinator Steinhorn) and Brock Hammit (assistant hitting coordinator), those three guys, really dumped a lot of time, along with Bernard Gilkey (defensive coach), to really get him focused. They came up with a drill set that has made him more disciplined at the plate, not chasing nearly as much, getting good swings off in the game and doing a little more damage pull side.

“We all knew it was there, because even last year, when the season was not going well for him, when he put the ball in play, how he impacted the ball was really, really extraordinary. He is starting to do it more, with some strikeouts that come with it. He leaves runners. He swung at a 3-0 pitch the other day and didn’t barrel it up. But we are really tickled to death about what he is putting into it.

“It is not so much his focus offensively, and honestly, he has become a better teammate. He’s become more outgoing. Not that he was a bad teammate, but he was kind of feeling his way through things. Now that he is having some success, he has raised his average 30-40 points in probably a month and a half. He is more outgoing; he is more of a teammate. He is important with other guys, getting them to realize and getting them to push a little bit.

“His whole game has changed. I think it is a lot attributed to him and our hitting people here. We are excited for him,” Kendall concluded.

Though Davis finally hit that high note everyone was waiting for, the Cardinals did not promote him to Peoria, and in July, the left-handed hitter backslid to a puzzling .675 OPS.

Still, Davis was promoted at the end of July when the Cardinals activated most of the hitters from their new 2024 draft class and assigned them to Palm Beach. Among several Beach Birds moved up to Peoria at the time was Davis, who had spent the entire first 12 months of his professional career in the Florida State League.

Surprisingly, after keeping Davis a full year in Class-A, the Cardinals promoted him again after just a month at High-A.

In his 30 Midwest League games, the California native had performed well, slashing .301/.388/.451/.839 in 129 plate appearances. Ten of his 34 hits went for extra bases, including three home runs and he plated 18 runners. His strikeout rate was 22.5% against a walk rate of 10.1%.

Joining Double-A Springfield near the season’s end, on September 6, Davis appeared in eight regular-season games. He slashed .250/.323/.429/.752 with three walks and three of his seven hits went for extra bases. After not running much during 2024 prior to then, he stole three bags in three attempts with the S-Cards.

In eight plate appearances in the Texas League postseason, Davis singled, homered and struck out three times. His OPS was .875.

By then, Davis had logged over 475 trips to the plate on the season at three levels with a very credible 119 wRC+, so the Cardinals decided not to send him to the Arizona Fall League.

2025 outlook

While Davis’s 2024 was generally good overall, he still has played in just 38 games above Low-A and his results in his career to date have swung wildly by month. Consistency can become his friend, once he finds it.

Davis is clearly positioned to open 2025 with Springfield and due to his 2024 introduction there, he knows what to expect from Double-A pitchers. The Texas League is often where a prospect’s power potential begins to translate into results. That should be among the 2025 expectations for Davis.

I have no inkling when it will happen, but whenever that expected high level of play arrives and remains, it will define when Davis moves up to Memphis. He should not be blocked by others when he shows he is ready.

Future outlook

Future Value: 45
Role: Platoon player
Risk: Moderate

I do not disagree with Blake’s current 45 Future Value for Davis, but to me, the ceiling of a platoon outfielder as the return from a first-round pick would be a disappointment.

I could offer concerns about factors like his ultimate defensive home and lack of baserunning, but those are secondary matters. When all is said and done, for Davis, it is going to be about power. If he can get the rest of his game in order such that the power can emerge, all should be fine for him as a slugging, strong armed corner outfielder.

A scout who had not seen Davis prior to Peoria offered some very interesting comments. In conversations, peer scouts “had killed” Davis, telling the scout that the player was “lazy, with a long swing and can’t play the outfield.”

This scout viewed a different player, however. “I was impressed with the Davis I saw with Peoria,” the evaluator said. “He showed good opposite field power, played a decent outfield and acted like he cares.

“He has the potential to become an everyday player. I feel good about him,” the scout concluded.

Thanks to the dual second half 2024 promotions, Davis has caught up with a normal career progression. He still has two seasons remaining before he reaches Rule 5 eligibility. That should give him ample time to progress through Double-A and establish himself at Triple-A.

If Davis can experience consistent success, a 50 FV (average everyday player) or higher ceiling and a St. Louis debut late in 2026 would not be out of the question. But there is much more work to be done in the interim.

MLB debut: Late 2026
Rule 5 eligible: 2026

Exclusively for members of The Cardinal Nation

TCN 2025 St. Louis Cardinals Prospect #11 – Victor Scott II

Our 2025 Top 50 series continues

To see the entire list of top Cardinals prospects, grading scales and remaining article schedule, click here. This includes the Top 50 countdown and 11 in-depth, follow-up articles breaking down the list.

50 Days, 50 Nights, 50 St. Louis Cardinals Prospects for 2025

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Brian Walton can be reached via email at brian@thecardinalnation.com. Follow Brian and The Cardinal Nation on X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky.

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