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It wasn’t that long ago when the Chicago Cubs’ 2018 second-round pick Brennen Davis was on the national radar as a top-20 prospect.
Now, Davis — who has 7 hits in his last 19 at-bats, including 5 homers and 9 RBIs — appears ready for his major-league call-up, ranking No. 1 on Baseball America’s “20 hottest MLB prospects” list, published May 21.
“The clock is ticking for Davis, who’s on his second option since being added to the Cubs’ 40-man roster before the 2023 season,” Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper wrote. “So having a hot streak like this is very well timed as Davis tries to show his back injury isn’t as much of an issue as it once was.”
Davis, whose journey through the minors has been hampered with bad injury luck, underwent back surgery in 2022.
“Davis does still show some effects from the injury,” Cooper wrote. “His average sprint speed nowadays is 26.9 feet per second, which is a bit below average. He once was a plus runner. But if he can mash like this, that won’t matter.”
At 24, he has been punishing the ball at Triple-A Iowa putting up filthy numbers, including 8 home runs and 21 RBIs in only 63 at-bats, with 15 walks and 20 runs scored.
And he a .270 batting average with a healthy 1.109 OPS on top of that.
Brennen Davis’ String of Injuries Has Slowed His Path to the Majors
The 6-foot-3 lanky-framed outfielder was often ranked in the top 3 of Cubs’ prospects over the last few years.
But one injury after another has pushed the Davis train off the tracks.
The list included an HBP-induced broken finger, a pair of concussions, hamstring issues and the severe back condition that wasn’t a severe back condition after all.
In a 2022 interview with Marquee Sports, Davis described the unexpected road to feeling better.
He endured multiple MRIs and eventually had surgery for what the doctors thought was a herniated disc. Only, there was no herniation and no spinal issue.
“They found a cluster of blood vessels [during surgery],” Davis said. “It’s kind of weird. It was a strange one. It’s called a vascular malformity. It’s just a genetic thing that popped up.”
Fast-forward to spring training 2024 and Davis looked every bit the part of a guy feeling good and ready to make his major league debut with the Chicago Cubs.
As (bad) luck would have it, he took a ball in the face—concussion number two—and once again, the big-show express experienced a delay pulling into Wrigley Field station.
Dual-Sport Brennen Davis Chose Baseball
A dual-sport athlete from the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Davis was part of a state championship high school basketball team as a junior at Basha HS.
Brennen’s immediate bloodline includes his mother Jakki, an accomplished long jumper at Washington and a former NBA star in Reggie Theus.
He chose to focus solely on baseball as a senior, and after a bumpy ride, appears on the cusp of the big show.
“A lot of it is perseverance,” Cubs assistant general manager Jared Banner said, according to an MLB.com story published May 20. “He’s faced some adversity and he’s battled back, and it’s a real credit to him.”
The Cubs need offense. After jettisoning another highly ranked prospect, Pete Crow-Armstrong, back to Triple-A Iowa, the outfield ranks are thin, and Ian Happ — owed $61 million over the next 3 years — can’t seem to fix his rudder.
“If Chicago still is struggling to perform on offense, it might not be a bad idea to give Davis a look,” according to SI.com’s Brad Wakai.
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