Swing’s the thing for Devers
Can he do even more for the Sox this season?
FORT MYERS — Talent has a way of making those watching it want even more once a young athlete blossoms into something special.
Take the case of Red Sox third baseman Rafeal Devers, all of 23 years old. It’s not enough that he produced last year at the clip of .311 with 54 doubles, 32 home runs, 129 runs and 115 RBI. The natural question: Can he do more this season?
Someone even asked the funloving, always-smiling blossoming star if he sees himself taking on more of a leadership role. Devers burst out laughing. “No, no, no,” he said. “I don’t really think about it too much. We have a lot of great leaders, a lot of good veterans here already. So, I try not to overstep. I know I have a couple of years, but there’s a lot of guys that have more. So, they can handle it.”
His personality is such that he’s not one to hold others accountable. He’s one to break tension because he’s always in a good mood. Good for a clubhouse, but not for leading it.
Veteran teammate J.D. Martinez captured Devers’ personality perfectly: “He’s a little kid. He’s like a kid, exactly what he looks like is how he is. He’s always just like (sticks his chin up and looks around the room) wondering what’s going on, talking to himself in the box. He’s just funny. He’s one of those people, he’s just harmless.”
Until he takes a bat to the plate. Then, to put it in a child’s terms, he’s a monster.
Devers caught fire in May last season and it lasted too long to call it a hot streak. Four months to be exact. He was 22 at the time, so the natural question is to ask if he can produce an even better season.
“It’s hard to say that you can see more than I saw for four straight months last year,” Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke said. “Four straight months he was as good as anybody you could be in baseball as far as squaring up a baseball when you needed him. When we needed a good at bat from him, for four straight months we saw a good at bat . ... It’s pretty hard to think of anybody doing that for six months. He had a fabulous year offensively when you look at even just the total numbers, but I know what I saw for four straight months was amazing.”
From May through August, Devers hit .327, scored 97 runs and drove in 96, and hit 28 home runs.
It’s possible Devers could improve as a hitter and few will know it because his numbers won’t be as good. Mookie Betts, who spent much of last season as the leadoff hitter, scored 135 runs. Subtracting him from the lineup figures to deflate everyone’s numbers to some extent. But that doesn’t have to translate to putting more on the plates of Devers, Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez.
“We know he’s a superstar, but we don’t feel any pressure because we know the type of team we have, and we’ll be ready,” Devers said of Betts.
The likely top of the order, at least against right-handed pitching, has Andrew Benintendi leading off, Devers hitting second, Bogaerts in the No. 3 hole and Martinez batting cleanup. That would put left-handed hitters back-toback to start the game.
“I don’t think it’s ideal, and it may change if a lefty throws that day,” Roenicke said. “Maybe we can flip-flop some guys that day, maybe (Kevin) Pillar goes up top, but we can look at that.”
Interestingly, Roenicke used Devers’ swing as a launching pad to a discussion that debunked one of the theories at the heart of the modern re-invention of baseball, the one that says all swings must finish on an upward path.
“The talk about launch angles and the swing kind of going up, that’s none of what Raffy does,” Roenicke said. “Raffy has what I think and what (Sox batting coach) Tim Hyers thinks is a great swing for today’s pitching. Today’s pitching is better stuff than we’ve ever seen. Velocity’s increased. Spin rate has increased on the breaking ball. And this little kind of lift (swing) really doesn’t fit the high fastball. For sure it doesn’t fit the high fastball.”
Roenicke had an attentive audience and kept talking.
“So with Raffy, we saw two years ago the high fastball gave him some problems. And then last year he either laid off it, or with those hands, he’s about as straight through the ball as you can get,” the interim manager said. “And that allows him to use those great hands to be able to hit a ball up here and also being able to hit a ball at times that’s six inches off the ground. It’s a great swing for me. Bogey’s kind of the same way. There’s no lift in Bogey’s swing. He’s very good on that high fastball.”
Roenicke then used his platform to talk to those who instruct young hitters.
“I think it’s misleading, a lot of hitting instructors, whether it’s necessarily what they’re teaching, but it’s how kids are hearing it. This uppercut swing doesn’t allow you to hit high velocity,” Roenicke said. “So somewhere in there we need to change the verbiage on what we say, especially to the youth, on how they’re supposed to swing, and to get to this new velocity that we’re seeing. I don’t see that going back the other way. So they’re going to have to figure out with their swing planes what I have to do to square up more baseballs. Raffy’s got it. What he does now really works with today’s pitching.”
In his first two at-bats of the spring during a 4-1 loss to the Twins at Hammond Stadium, Devers was retired on a called third strike and flied to right.