COUNT ON DEVERS TO COME OUT SWINGING
Red Sox manager Alex Cora has marveled at how someone can have such gigantic plate coverage at just 21 years old.
Teammates who have seen the kid play since he first arrived last summer are astonished at his maturity and growth in such a short period of time.
David Ortiz has called him an “MVP-caliber” player who put up terrific numbers without being “into the mechanical side of the game yet.”
There’s no shortage of hype for Rafael Devers’ second season.
“But all you’ve got to think of is when a kid like that a couple years from now learns about the game and figures things out and he’s only going to be 22,” Ortiz said.
But there are still a few questions.
Perhaps the most interesting one coming into this season is this: With Cora preaching aggressiveness to a team that was among the least aggressive at the plate last year, how will that affect Devers?
Since he arrived from Double-A Portland last July through the end of the season, Devers swung at about 50 percent of the pitches he saw, which put him in the top 15 among major leaguers. And he didn’t always swing at the right pitches.
Devers hacked at 38.5 percent of the pitches he saw that were balls, according to FanGraphs. Had he taken enough at-bats to qualify last year, he would’ve ranked 14th in the big leagues in that category.
But what is Cora supposed to do? He’s explained a few times that he wants Devers to stay aggressive, because that’s his style. He famously took a highand-outside 102-mph fastball from Aroldis Chapman and hit it out of the park at Yankee Stadium to tie the game in the ninth inning of a mid-August contest. And this spring, he’s been doing more of the same.
Take a glimpse at his twohit game against the Baltimore Orioles last week. The first time up against righty Gabriel Ynoa, Devers hacked at the first two pitches and sent the second one into the right-field gap for a double.
The next time up, he finally looked at a couple pitches, both balls. He saw two strikes in the at-bat and swung at both of them. The second one was high but hittable and Devers turned on it so fast it zipped over the right-field fence for a line-drive home run.
The third time up he saw three strikes, and again swung at all three, finally flying out to left-center.
He swung the bat seven times on the day. He saw seven strikes. Two of his swings resulted in extrabase hits.
“I like to do that,” he said. “A lot of the time the pitchers throw their fastball right there, you just have to hack. I’m aggressive early and I got my pitch. No matter if it’s a fastball or breaking ball I’m aggressive and I hit it.”
Too aggressive? Hardly. The Red Sox are planning on hitting him fifth or sixth in the order.
“Yeah, that’s an interesting one, because he’s ag- gressive and I don’t want to take his aggressiveness out of the equation,” Cora said last week. “With him it’s going to be controlling the at-bats. I don’t want to take away his aggressiveness. Like (against the Orioles), that first-pitch breaking ball in the third at-bat, I think It was well, you never know with him, he might hit It hard. But most of us don’t hit that ball hard. You take that pitch down in the zone. It’s on the edge. So we have to keep preaching him on that we want to do damage in the strike zone but at the same time we can’t forget he’s 21 and he’s still developing at the best level in baseball.”
Catcher Christian Vazquez predicts Devers is “going to be a stud.”
“He’s still young, still learning,” Vazquez said. “But he has great skills. He needs to make a couple adjustments but when he feels comfortable and in a good place he plays good.”
Said Hanley Ramirez: “The thing for him is, you’ve just got to let him play and relax. He’s a young guy. His mind is still a little immature. You’ve just got to let him play and don’t try to put too much pressure on him.” Shortstop Xander Bogaerts said he’s going to try to help Devers with his defense at third base, the other question mark coming into the season.
He was considered an unsteady glove without much range for a 237-pounder who stands 6 feet tall.
But he impressed last year after his call-up. He’s been a mixed bag early in camp.
Joey Cora, Alex’ brother and the third base coach for the Pirates, was surprised to see Devers getting to balls close to the line in a game earlier this spring.
“The other day Joey called me after we played that game in Bradenton and he made some nice plays and Joey said, ‘I don’t know what people are talking about — he’s a good defender,’” Alex Cora said. “He just has to keep working. Sometimes you’re strong to your left instead of your
right. Well, we’ll see how that works, but he’s getting repetitions which is very important.”
Save some for later?
It makes sense in theory — reduce a pitcher’s workload in March and April so that he may have more energy and strength in September in October. But has that theory ever been proven effective? And what are the risks involved? According to Red Sox pitching coach Dana LeVangie, the idea had already been advanced by Chris Sale, who was frustrated by his disastrous postseason debut against the Houston Astros last October, before anyone on the team suggested it.
“We had a pretty long conversation over the winter,” LeVangie said. “But he had also put those kind of thoughts into his mind prior to our conversations, like, ‘I have to change something. I have to change something to help me be effective not only at the beginning but also at the end.’”
LeVangie didn’t offer any scientific reason for the Red Sox’ strategy. It boils down to simple logic to help Sale, and others, be better rested for October.
There’s little record of other teams having tried it with pitchers who went on to have great postseason success. The legends of October haven’t exactly set aside April for a “gradual build-up.”
Over the past 10 years, 10 pitchers have thrown at least 35 innings in the postseason.
The most recent was Justin Verlander, who struck out 38 in 362⁄3 innings with a 2.21 ERA for the World Series champion Houston Astros last year. He didn’t hold back in April and May, instead combining to throw 1,071 pitches through his first 10 starts, throwing at least 100 pitches in nine of those 10 starts.
Of those 10 pitchers cited, eight of them threw at least 1,000 pitches in their first 10 starts. The only two who didn’t were Jon Lester with the 2016 Chicago Cubs and
Madison Bumgarner with the 2014 San Francisco Giants.
Lester threw 997 pitches, going 100 or more in seven of his first 10 starts. In October, he was the horse the Cubs needed to break the curse as he threw 352⁄3 innings, striking out 32 with a 2.02 ERA.
Bumgarner also fell just short, throwing 996 pitches in his first 10 starts. And this is where he’s most different from the others: He went over 100 pitches just four times in those first 10 starts.
In the postseason, Bumgarner set the record with 522⁄3 innings, and he did it with a sparkling 1.03 ERA while leading the Giants to a World Series title.
Last year, Sale was let loose from Opening Day. He threw 1,078 pitches through 10 starts, going over 100 in nine of them.
“You want to be aware of pitch counts,” LeVangie said. “You’re also aware that they want to compete and get nine innings, but maybe that can’t happen in April. Maybe we take things slower in the beginning of the season to protect us along the way.
“Our offense is deep and maybe there will be opportunities to get up big and get Chris out of the game, or David Price. To me it’s all these guys. So we’re protecting them and then getting to September and October and we can ride them.”
Kelly set to mix it up
Joe Kelly can throw 100 mph but, he’s trying to convince hitters to forget about that in attempt to build an even more successful season in his second year as a full-time reliever.
In his second spring training outing, Kelly faced three Pittsburgh Pirates batters and struck out all three. Not once did he start an atbat with a heater.
“I started every single hitter with a first-pitch off-speed,” Kelly said. “I’m sure they have what I throw and know the velocity so you go off a report. To go away from a report, obviously, is something that’s big because everyone has scouting and video.”
Last year, Kelly averaged 99.2 mph on his fastball, second to only Aroldis Chapman among major league relievers. Batters hit just .188 off the heater. But they hit .429 off his curveball, which he threw almost 20 percent of the time.
Throwing his curve is “something that I didn’t do as much as I should have last year,” Kelly said. “It didn’t make me terrible, but there are times when I didn’t use it when I should have been using it. I can throw at least one off-speed pitch for a strike so I think it’s going to be a little more used this year and that usually ends up playing a bit better with the fastball instead of guys just sitting on fastball.
“I don’t want to go 5050 but even Craig Kimbrel throws his curveball a ton. I barely threw any off-speed pitches at times last year. That’s something I’m focused on working on here and carrying over.”
Kelly, who had a 2.79 ERA last year, is in his last season under contract with the Red Sox before he’s eligible for free agency.
A new way to `Watch'
NESN’s arrangement with Channel 25 to show Red Sox games on local cable is restricted to spring training only, but during the regular season there could be another way to catch the local nine other than NESN — or MLB’s usual national outlets.
For the first time, games will be broadcast on Facebook Watch — the video arm of the social media platform. One afternoon game per week will be exclusively streamed nationally using MLB Network’s production team. The first scheduled game is the Phillies at the Mets on April 4 at 1:10 p.m.
MLB Network will also be available to stream via YouTube TV, new this year . . . .
The Red Sox announced last week that tickets for the 135th edition of the Harvard Yale football game at Fenway Park on Nov. 17, go on sale April 27.