PITTSBURGH – Sometimes, baseball is a straightforward game.

You don’t always need computer printouts. Charts and graphs aren’t always necessary. Statcast can be cast aside for a few moments.

Now and again, baseball sense prevails. It stems from the wisdom of individuals who have dedicated their lives to the game.

Pittsburgh Pirates bench coach Gene Lamont took catcher Henry Davis aside during the seventh inning of Thursday night’s game against the Cincinnati Reds at PNC Park. Lamont, 78, asked Davis, 25, a simple question.

“How much do you think about what the pitcher’s going to throw you?” Lamont queried.

“A lot. Kind of what we focus on,” Davis answered.

Lamont countered with “Alright, stop doing that. Pitches down the middle have been good to hit for a long time. Just try and get one of those.”

Davis proceeded to hit a two-run home run, his first longball in exactly two months, to cap the scoring in the Pirates’ 7-0 victory in the opener of a four-game series.

Paul Skenes was the star of the game, scattering seven hits and striking out eight over six scoreless innings as he combined with Cam Sanders, Ryan Borucki, and Kyle Nicolas on a nine-hit shutout.

However, Davis’ 2-for-4 night made Pirates manager Don Kelly smile. In addition to not having homered since June 7, a span of 108 plate appearances, Davis had hit just .074 (4 for 54) in 21 games since the beginning of July.

The Pirates drafted Davis with the first overall selection in 2021. His reputation was that of an offense-first catcher who might have to switch positions due to his poor defense.

Instead, he has turned into Parallel Universe Henry Davis. Now, he is considered a defense-first catcher who doesn’t hit well enough to get regular playing time.

“It’s a hard game to play in general,” Kelly said. “When you’re struggling like that (offensively), the impressive thing is the way he’s improved his defense and has been able to continue to stay completely locked in on the defensive side throughout the struggles offensively. That’s hard to do when you’re going through the struggles and you’re hitting the ball hard, you’re not getting anything to show for it, and you’ve got a huge job behind the plate that he’s dominated.”

However, scouts and opposing managers have told me throughout the season that they feel Davis is close to breaking out offensively, even if his .172/.254/.290 season slash line in 193 plate appearances doesn’t show it.

Since I don’t write about baseball to turn my stories into a trigonometry problem, I’ll say that the advanced metrics suggest that Davis’ stats should be better this year.

Davis is familiar with those metrics and can take some comfort in them. Yet he knows that baseball is ultimately about production, not mathematics.

“We live in a crazy era that people can actually see all the information on how well you hit the ball and all that stuff,” Davis said. “But doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t really help your team win, and obviously, that’s the goal here. I know when we do what we need to do here, I’ll be a driver in that. Just hitting the ball better, consistently committing to it, and keeping my head on straight when things might not go the way I want them to. Just continuing to work matters.”

As anyone with baseball sense will tell you.