Derek Shelton’s mismanagement of Henry Davis is only further stalling his development

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Derek Shelton is making a bad decision.

When Pittsburgh Pirates breakout catcher Joey Bart landed on the injured list, the team recalled former first overall pick Henry Davis. While Davis’ major league career hasn’t gotten started the way many had hoped, he has shown plenty of potential at Triple-A. However, manager Derek Shelton’s continuous mismanagement of the lineup is only going to stall any further development Davis could make in the majors this year.

Davis was recalled on the 26th. Since then, Davis has only started one game and has been used as a pinch hitter once. In the month prior to getting recalled to the bigs, Davis was batting .316/.385/.500 with a .390 wOBA and 129 wRC+. Davis had multiple promising peripherals. He had cut his whiff rate down to 24.9%, with a 17% strikeout rate and a 10% walk rate.

Despite the promising numbers, Shelton has stuck with the 35-year-old veteran Yasmani Grandal. To Grandal’s credit, he has been red hot, batting .270/.357/.541 with a .383 wOBA and 145 wRC+ since the start of July. At the time of writing this, he is on a six-game hit streak, including two home runs, one of which was a walk-off.

But because of Shelton’s mismanagement of other parts of the team, particularly the bullpen, they are in a situation where there is nothing big left to play for, unless you consider avoiding last place in the NL Central a worthwhile cause that justifies disrupting Davis’ potential development.

While Grandal has been good, Davis’ development is more important at this stage. Plus, the Pirates need to get an idea of what they’re going into this offseason with the catching situation. Endy Rodriguez will be back, and Joey Bart has broken out this year. Right now should be the time to see if Davis can take a step forward. 

Derek Shelton has failed to prioritize Henry Davis' development for Pirates

On top of all that, Davis will not develop with the current playing time situation. Shelton has continuously put players in a bad situation. Just look at how many times he put David Bednar and Colin Holderman in during close games despite something clearly being wrong with both pitchers. How does Shelton expect Davis to improve when he’s not giving him a chance to? How does Shelton expect Ben Cherington to make more informed decisions when he’s not giving him a chance to see what his prospects/former prospects can do at the bigs? These are questions that need to be asked (along with the ones fellow Rum Bunter writer Ethan Fisher has proposed).

The worst part is that Shelton has already learned the importance of regular playing time with a catcher by what's happened to Joey Bart. Like Davis, Bart was a former high-selection draft pick who struggled to find his footing in the major leagues for the first few seasons. A potentially huge reason why Bart has broken out this year is because he is now getting consistent playing time without the threat of demotion looming overhead. 

If this is how Shelton is going to handle the catching situation, then he should have asked to bring up Jason Delay instead. The Pirates have nothing to gain by keeping Grandal in as the primary backstop. Grandal should only be starting once or twice a week, with Davis getting the rest of the starts. Shelton is only further complicating the catching situation by not giving Davis a real shot, and is making it even more difficult to evaluate Davis' potential future with the Bucs. If Shelton doesn't start Davis for most of the games in September, it'll only go down as yet another bad decision in a long line of other poor choices in what has been a colassal failure during Derek Shelton's first real test as a MLB manager.