The Phillies signed former Atlanta Braves starter Tucker Davidson to a minor league contract earlier this week. The lefty has spent time pitching in South Korea for the KBO’s Lotte Giants.

Hailing from Amarillo, Texas, Davidson went the junior-college route before pro ball. He attended Tascosa High School in Amarillo, where he played quarterback in football and pitched in baseball, then headed to Midland College after going undrafted out of high school. At Midland, he put up a strong sophomore season in 2016, going 6–2 with a 2.27 ERA and 75 strikeouts in 71 1/3 innings, and that spring basically put him back on the scouting map.

Atlanta picked Davidson in the 19th round of the 2016 MLB Draft, and he signed instead of heading to NC State, which is a pretty common move for pitchers who start trending up late. He climbed the Braves ladder in a fairly steady way, and the best snapshot of Davidson as a prospect is 2019, when he split the year between Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett and logged 129 2/3 innings with a 2.15 ERA and 134 strikeouts. FanGraphs minor-league line for that season also shows how complete it looked on paper, with the run prevention backed by solid strikeout and walk rates across the full workload.

Major league timeline and results so far
Davidson debuted with Atlanta in 2020, then had his first real big-league run in 2021 and 2022, with stops later in Anaheim and Kansas City, plus a brief look with Baltimore in 2024. His overall MLB stat line through 2024 is 56 games, 17 starts, 100 strikeouts in 129 2/3 innings, and a 5.76 ERA. The bright side to the story is that he has shown he can work as both a starter and a bulk reliever, and he has had stretches where his stuff and angles make him legitimately uncomfortable for hitters, especially when his breaking ball is landing where he wants. The downside is that the results have not held consistently across seasons, and when the fastball command slips or he falls behind in counts, big-league hitters have punished him. You can see that shape in his year-to-year outcomes, including an up-and-down 2022–2023 run prevention stretch, even while his expected-results markers were sometimes slightly kinder than the ERA.

Pitch mix, velocity, and how he tries to get outs
Davidson is a lefty who, in the Statcast tracking, leans on a deep menu that centers around breaking stuff and a splitter, with multiple fastball looks mixed in. On his Statcast pitch-arsenal page, his overall mix is led by a slider at 34.3%, then a split-finger at 17.9%, a sinker at 16.4%, a four-seamer at 14.9%, a curveball at 11.9%, and a small slice of a sweeper at 4.5%. Velocity-wise, the four-seamer and sinker have generally lived around the low 90s. In 2023, for example, the four-seamer averaged 91.4 mph and the sinker averaged 90.5 mph, and in his small 2024 sample the four-seamer and sinker were right around 91 mph as well. His splitter has typically been his big speed-change pitch, sitting in the low 80s, like 82.6 mph in 2023 and about 80 mph in his small 2024 snapshot. The slider has tended to sit mid 80s, around 84.8 mph in 2023 and 86.8 mph in 2024. He also shows a true curveball in the upper 70s – 78.2 mph in 2022 – and a sweeper look that has shown up around 79–80 mph when he has leaned into it.

The way it’s supposed to play is pretty straightforward. The fastball gets you into the zone and sets the tone. The slider is the main pitch to miss bats and get hitters to chase, especially when he’s getting it to start on the plate and finish off of it. The splitter can steal strikeouts and induce soft contact when hitters are gearing up for the heater or sitting on spin. The curveball is more of a different shape and speed band that can keep hitters from getting too comfortable, and the sweeper is a situational wrinkle thrown in to keep hitters guessing.

What the sabermetrics hint at, in plain English
If you just want the quick read on strengths and weaknesses, it comes down to this: Davidson has enough different looks to keep hitters guessing, and when his offspeed and breaking stuff are crisp, his quality of contact allowed can look pretty reasonable for a back-end arm. Statcast’s expected line for 2023, for instance, had his ERA at 5.96 but an xERA of 5.16, which is not great, but it does suggest there were stretches where the contact he allowed was not quite as damaging as the scoreboard results.

The bigger issue is that his margin is tied to location and count leverage. Across his MLB career, the strikeout rate has been modest and the walk rate has floated high enough that he can get forced to pitch into the heart of the zone. His strikeout and walk rates swing around depending on role and season, rather than locking into one stable profile. When he’s ahead, he can use that slider and splitter combo to finish hitters. When he’s behind, the fastball is hittable in the low 90s, and big-league hitters have been able to square it up often enough to turn innings quickly.

If you’re looking for one encouraging sign, it’s that his secondary pitches have shown the ability to generate whiffs. The splitter in particular has flashed some real teeth. In 2023 pitch-by-pitch results, his split-finger showed a very strong swing-and-miss rate, which is exactly what you want from that pitch. If the splitter is landing, it gives him a real path to neutralizing right-handed bats even without plus velocity.

Injuries and how they’ve affected the arc
The most notable injury on the record is that Atlanta placed Davidson on the 60-day injured list in June 2021 with left forearm inflammation. A forearm injury can be tricky because even when a pitcher returns, it can take a while before the feel for spin and command fully stabilizes again. In Davidson’s case, he did get back that season and even made a very high-profile spot start in the 2021 World Series due to roster necessity, which tells you the Braves still trusted his ability to get outs in a tough moment. Still, when you zoom out at the whole timeline, his post-2021 stretch has had a lot of role changes and performance volatility, and injuries are often part of that story even when they are not the only reason.

Where he stands now and the realistic projection
The cleanest scouting projection at this point is a depth lefty who can cover innings, compete for a swingman role, and give you a spot start in a pinch. The ceiling outcome is that the slider and splitter are sharp enough often enough that he can be a useful multi-inning weapon who keeps the ball on the ground and avoids the crooked inning. The risk outcome is that if the walks creep up or the fastball has to live in the middle too much, he becomes matchup-sensitive and bounces between Triple-A and the big leagues. The good news is that the ingredients are still there, especially the ability to change speeds and shapes without being predictable. The challenge is turning that into clean, repeatable strikes and getting to his best pitches from good counts more often than not.

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