By normal standards, Rafael Devers is having a terrific season.
Entering Wednesday Devers was batting .269 with 29 home runs, 88 RBI, 28 doubles and an .853 OPS, putting him on pace to comfortably top 30 home runs and 100 RBI for the third time in his career. He’s also third on the team in wins above replacement (3.0), leads the team in total bases (244), and ranks seventh in baseball for OPS among qualifying players age 26 and under.
Most players would kill to put up numbers like that, yet by Devers’ standards this season has often felt a tad underwhelming.
Devers’ season has been defined by a series of peaks and valleys, with brief explosions of production interspersed around longer offensive droughts. He hit three home runs total in the month of May after hitting 10 in April, went homerless for 16 straight games between May 20 and June 8 and more recently hit just one over 17 games between July 28 and Aug. 16.
His on-base percentage also lingered south of .300 through mid-June, and Red Sox manager Alex Cora acknowledged that Devers has struggled to settle into a rhythm at the plate throughout the year.
“I think mechanically he’s been kind of off the whole season. God bless him, right? You put up those numbers and you don’t feel right,” Cora said. “He’s still hitting the ball hard, at one point there he was taking his walks. Right now he’s in between probably, he’s late on the fastball, but with him it takes one swing.”
Cora said opposing teams have been pitching Devers differently, and even when he knows what’s coming Devers has sometimes been anxious to try and crush the ball rather than let it come to him so he can use the entire field.
That is part of why Devers has been more of a pull-side hitter than usual lately. So far his pull percentage has been 34.7%, up from 28.2% last year, and so far only six of his 29 home runs have gone to left field, with only one of those coming at Fenway Park. Ideally, he and Boston’s other lefties would be regularly peppering the Green Monster with opposite field line drives, which hasn’t been happening.
Part of the problem, Cora said, is Devers is still trying to adjust to his new position as focal point of the Red Sox lineup.
“I believe so. You can see certain teams pitching around him, taking their chances with the guy after him,” Cora said. “That’s part of the progression, he’s learning ‘you are the guy,’ and was the guy last year too, with Xander (Bogaerts) struggling and J.D. (Martinez) too, so he saw it last year. He keeps learning and understanding that taking his walks is valuable for us to keep the line moving.”
Defensively Devers’ struggles have been well documented. Though never considered a great defensive player, Devers did show notable improvement last year but has regressed on the field once more this summer.
In 2021 Devers committed 22 errors at third base and posted minus-13 defensive runs saved, but last season he cut those down to 14 and minus-6 respectively. Now he’s up to 17 errors and a minus-6 mark with a month still to play, and Cora said routine plays have proven the biggest issue.
“He’s made great plays to his left, he’s gotten better at going for slow grounders and making those plays, but the routine play, that’s the most important play in baseball and we haven’t been able to be consistent with that one,” Cora said. “There are other situations where he’s struggled, men at third with less than two outs playing in, he gets ahead of himself so we’ve just got to keep working.
“We’ve seen flashes of him for a long period of time that he can play good defense,” he continued. “We have to keep talking to him like you make an error you make an error, it’s part of it, you can’t get down on yourself.”
It wouldn’t be fair to call Devers’ season a disappointment, he’s been healthy and ranks among the most impactful hitters in the American League despite all the bumps along the way. Still, with his historic 10-year, $313.5 million extension set to take effect next year the Red Sox undoubtably hope Devers can work through these growing pains and emerge as the true franchise player the club believes he can be.
The Red Sox announced Wednesday that outfielder Jarren Duran’s season-ending surgery on his sprained left big toe was a success. The flexor tendon repair was performed by Dr. Robert Anderson at the Charlotte Surgical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Duran is expected to be ready to return by the start of spring training.
Cora said left-hander Brennan Bernardino (COVID-19) is feeling better and should hopefully be ready to return once he’s eligible for activation. Players placed on the COVID-19 list must sit for a minimum of seven days, meaning Bernardino could be back as early as Monday.
Rookie outfielder Wilyer Abreu, who was placed on the paternity leave list Monday, is also expected to rejoin the big league team when the travel to Kansas City for this weekend’s three-game series against the Royals.