Meet a Prospect: Kyle Davies

The New York Yankees continued to stockpile pitching right before Spring Training this week when the team signed RHP Kyle Davies to a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training. It’s Prospects Month here on the blog and while Davies has enjoyed success with both the Atlanta Braves and the Kansas City Royals I still wouldn’t consider him an established player. With that said I feel comfortable still calling him a prospect and introducing him to you all today. This is Meet a Prospect, Kyle Davies Edition.

Hiram Kyle Davies was born on September 9, 1983 in Stockbridge, GA (about an hour and 45 minutes away from me) and graduated from Stockbridge High School. Davies did enough in High School as a pitcher and was drafted and signed right out of high school by the Atlanta Braves. Davies turned down scholarships from Georgia Tech and others before the Braves made him a professional baseball player. With injuries to both John Thomson and Mike Hampton the Braves called up Davies along with other “Baby Braves” (a term coined in 2005 when a slew of prospects were called up at once) and Davies made an immediate impact not allowing a single run in his first three starts. Davies let that momentum take him into a starting job out of Spring Training in 2006 before a torn groin muscle forced him to miss 10 weeks of the season. Davies was never the same in a Braves uniform after that posting consecutive ugly seasons as a starter that forced him to be traded to the Kansas City Royals on July 31, 2007 for Octavio Dotel.

Davies tenure as a Royals player started right where his Braves tenure left off allowing five earned runs in three innings in his Royals debut. Davies can also be remembered as the pitcher that gave up Alex Rodriguez’s 500^th home run of his career before a right shoulder impingement injury ended his Kansas City career prematurely and led to him being released on August 10, 2011. Davies signed a pair of minor league deals with the Toronto Blue Jays and the Minnesota Twins but continued to battle shoulder injuries before his minor league deal with the Cleveland Indians in 2014.

Davies 2014 season was uneventful but healthy and will look to bring that same health to New York for the 2015 season. While a long shot to make the team it never hurts to have that depth and insurance in Triple-A and Davies can be just that for the Yankees. Welcome aboard Kyle and the best of luck to you in your tenure here.