While there have been other waiver wire wonders this year, Garrett Jones, Chris Coghlan, Kendry Morales, and Aaron Hill to name a few, Rajai Davis is the player that has truly saved my bacon. If I am able to hold slim leads he will have been most responsible for championships in my two most competitive rotisserie leagues.

The Matt Holliday trade on July 25 opened the A’s outfield for a new starter. Davis was not the automatic choice, in fact manager Bob Geren gave the younger Eric Patterson the first opportunity. He slipped past the mainstream analysis of the move. Yahoo’s article made no mention at all of Davis. ESPN simply stated, “Rajai Davis can run” in the middle of a paragraph that spelled out why the Oakland offense was in ruins. Davis made his first post-Holliday trade appearance on July 28 and promptly hit in 19 of 20.

I added Davis on August 4 and 5, just before news of Patterson’s demotion broke on August 6. That was slightly fortunate, as it left Davis without significant competition for the center field position (Scott Hairston taking Holliday’s spot in left). In my lineups Davis has hit .340 with 36 runs, one HR, 25 RBI, 23 SB, 10 BB, and a .840 OPS. The stolen bases and average clearly stand out, but over a full season he is on pace for roughly 100 runs and 75 RBI. His overall production allowed my teams to gain points in steals without sacrificing other categories.

In the Fantasy Gameday Keeper League I had one measly stolen base point when I added Davis. Counting on at least 60 steals from Jose Reyes will do that. I had already traded for Jacoby Ellsbury, but knew I needed another solid speed threat to move beyond the bottom few. I now have seven SB points and a two point overall lead. The other league I am referencing is a longtime one consisting primarily of friends from college. With some assistance from Scott Podsednik and Elvis Andrus I went from 4 points in steals to 11. My lead is five points.

If this is coming off as a brag piece, I apologize because I recognize this success is a combination of skill and luck and if anything weighted more towards the latter. I was fortunate to have a need for steals and space readily available when Davis emerged. In FGD I dropped the disappointing Chris Iannetta for him and in the other league Willy Taveras was sent packing. I will take credit for checking the stats and noticing that Davis’ walk rate was way up this year (9.0% at the time, from 3.6% in 2008) and his Oswing% was trending down, supporting more walks. I was also fortunate that none of the major writers took a stand for him. Nothing makes an underrated player overrated like his picture on Yahoo’s fantasy sports front page. Was there any reason to think he would be one of the most valuable players in all of fantasy baseball in August and September? No, he exceeded all reasonable expectations.

I think in order to win any competitive league one needs some good breaks along the way. Davis was my biggest, but not my only. I’m not a Bud drinker, but should I hold on for the wins, Rajai, this Dogfish Head Burton Baton is for you.

Postscript: I held on for the win in one league, but came up a half point short in FGD Keeper. The really ugly side is a Lastings Milledge home run that was wiped out when the game was halted due to weather (and not made up) was a decisive factor between winning and losing? Does anyone else have a similar “bad beat” story? Let’s commiserate.