Sport: Baseball
Born: January 26, 1999
Town: Berlin, New Jersey
Davis Schneider was born January 26, 1999 in Berlin, NJ. Davis began playing organized baseball at the age of seven and was a standout player at every level. He had a strong arm and a powerful bat, and was a special defensive player, with soft hands and great anticipation. He also impressed his coaches with his level-headedness—never panicking in the field, putting bad days behind him, learning from mistakes, and not letting his head get too big following his successes. In 2013, Davis enrolled at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees and made the varsity as a freshman infielder the following spring.
Eastern had a strong sports program, but was better known for its football products, including Eli Apple and Logan Ryan. Field hockey Olympian Rachel Dawson, Rutgers soccer star Amirah Ali and champion sprinter English Gardner also attended the school.
Davis became a key man on Rob Christ’s Vikings varsity as a sophomore in 2015, and was named All-South Jersey as an infielder. He reached his full height of 5’9” as a junior and his weight ballooned over 200 pounds. It didn’t slow Davis down, as he his .439 with a school-record 16 doubles and was named to the regional all-star team again. But he knew that, to earn a scholarship with a Division-I school and to get on the radar of big-league scouts, he’d need to become leaner, meaner, stronger and faster.
Between his junior and senior seasons, Davis hit the weight room and dropped more than 30 pounds. In 2017, he became the leader of the Vikings. He wasn’t a rah-rah guy, but he had a game-changing bat and was an exceptional third baseman with a big arm. He hit .441 as a senior with five homers and 40 RBIs, winning All-South Jersey honors for the third year in a row.
Davis was selected by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 28th round and chose to go pro over a scholarship to Rutgers. He was assigned to the short-season Gulf Coast Jays, where he batted .238 in 50 games and led the club with four home runs. Davis moved slowly up the organizational ladder over the next few years and finally had a breakout year in 2022, when his power blossomed and he made it all the way to AAA.
Over the winter, Davis packed on some additional muscle and, in 2023, he began the year with Buffalo of the International League, playing multiple positions for Casey Candaele, a jack-of-all-trades himself. Davis slugged 21 homers for the Bisons in 87 games. The difference in his game was a super-selective batting eye. If he saw a strike, he took a hack but, if he didn’t, he refused to chase—forcing enemy hurlers to throw him more hittable pitches.
The Jays called Davis up in early August and started him against the Red Sox at second base. He found Fenway Park to his liking, popping two homers in his first three games, including a solo blast over the Green Monster in his first big-league at bat, off James Paxton. In three victories over Boston, Davis collected nine hits and knocked in five runs. The only other player with nine hits in his first three games was Coaker Triplett of the Cubs, in 1938.
Later in the month, Davis hit four homers in five games, and had an RBI in 10 of 12 games from August 19 to September 6. After 25 games, he was hitting .370 with a .500 on-base percentage mark and an .815 slugging average. His 1.315 OPS was the best in baseball history through 25 contests, eclipsing the epic hot starts of Willie McCovey, Albert Pujols, Rhys Hoskins, Joe DiMaggio, Toronto teammate Bo Bichette and others. The Jays needed his production desperately as they fought for a Wild Card berth.
Davis’s ability to barrel up was all the more impressive because he wasn’t getting cheated on his cuts. Despite the lofty average, he was striking out better than 25% of the time. Yet he refused to chase bad pitches—and what he did swing at, he almost always pulled in the air to left or left-center.