This time last season so much of the discourse surrounding the Red Sox revolved around Xander Bogaerts and his looming free agency. It was like a dark cloud that hung over everything, and even when the Red Sox played well it lingered like an odor you couldn’t escape.
Isn’t it refreshing how much different the conversation is now?
After failing to retain Bogaerts or Mookie Betts before him, the Red Sox finally reached an agreement with one of their homegrown stars this past offseason, signing Rafael Devers to a 10-year, $313.5 million extension. The deal is the largest in Red Sox history and will ensure Devers remains the face of the franchise for the next decade.
Though the extension technically doesn’t take effect until next year, it does have the short-term benefit of removing the threat of yet another superstar walking out the door. As a result fans have been able to live in the here and now, and so far Devers has looked worth every penny of that contract and more.
Through the first three weeks of the season Devers has been among the most productive players in baseball. Entering Friday’s series opener in Milwaukee he was batting .269 with seven home runs, 18 RBIs and a .929 OPS through 19 games.
Devers also ranked top five in MLB in extra-base hits (14, second) and total bases (48, third) along with fourth in homers and sixth in RBI, and at his current pace he would finish the season with 59 home runs, easily breaking David Ortiz’s franchise record for homers in a season (54).
Beyond his impressive production, Devers’ underlying metrics show this isn’t a fluke and is likely to continue.
Look at any player’s Statcast page on MLB’s Baseball Savant website and you’ll see a series of categories corresponding to different advanced metrics along with how that player ranks compared to others. Basically, the higher the percentile and the deeper the shade of red, the better, and if you look at Devers’ page you’ll see a whole lot of red.
Devers currently ranks 85th percentile or better in six categories, including outs above average (97th), hard hit percentage (93rd), average exit velocity (93rd), expected slugging percentage (92nd), max exit velocity (89th) and barrel percentage (87th).
What does that mean? In layman’s terms, he’s crushing the ball at an elite level and doing it more consistently than just about anyone. Look back at past years and you’ll see the same thing, too.
The other thing that jumps out about Devers is the way he’s sprayed the ball all over the place. Entering Friday five of his home runs had gone to the opposite field compared to just two on the pull side, and five of his six doubles went to left as well. On the flip side, most of his singles have gone either up the middle or to right, so it’s not like he’s been late on everything and muscling a few over the Green Monster.
If not for the extension, we likely wouldn’t be talking about any of this. Or if we were, it would be in the gloomy context of how it might affect Devers’ market.
Say what you will about the Red Sox and how they’ve handled things in recent years, but locking up Devers when they did was a great and necessary move. Had they waited any longer his price would have only gone up, and now fans can enjoy watching Devers without any trepidation over what his future could hold over the long haul.
