Slugger Khris Davis, a onetime MLB HR champ, calls it a career
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Khris Davis, who spent nine seasons in the Majors with the Brewers, A¡¯s and Rangers, has retired from baseball, he told MLB.com's Martšªn Gallegos.
Davis, now 36 and pursuing a career as an auto mechanic, had not appeared in a Major League game since Oct. 3, 2021.
Davis was a seventh-round pick by the Brewers in the 2009 Draft and played three seasons in Milwaukee from 2013-15, but he really found his footing following the February 2016 trade that sent him to Oakland. From 2016-18, Davis was one of MLB¡¯s premier power hitters, putting together three consecutive 40-homer seasons, leading all of baseball with a career-high 48 in 2018, when he won the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award. His 133 total home runs over that three-year span were also the most in baseball.
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The outfielder further distinguished himself by recording one of the greatest statistical oddities in recent memory, hitting exactly .247 in four straight seasons from 2015-18, which made him the first qualifying hitter in AL/NL history to record the same batting average in four consecutive seasons.
Davis¡¯ production stalled following the 2018 season, and his career with the A¡¯s initially appeared to have come to an end when he was traded along with Jonah Heim and Dane Acker to the Rangers in exchange for Elvis Andrus, Aramis Garcia and cash in February 2021. However, Davis was released by the Rangers in June and later returned to Oakland for his final 53 big league appearances down the stretch.
After becoming a free agent at the end of the 2021 season, he spent his 2022 season with the Diablos Rojos del Mexico of the Mexican League and the Kentucky Wild Health Genomes of the independent Atlantic League. His eye-catching power even made a reappearance during that Atlantic League stint, as he hit 17 home runs in just 54 games in Kentucky.
"There was no more opportunity for me in baseball," Davis said in an interview with USA Today Sports, "so it took a lot of searching of who I was outside baseball. I¡¯m still young. I didn¡¯t want to just sit at home."
Davis finished his career with a .242/.314/.491 slash line, 221 home runs and 590 RBIs.