For Devers, improved offense could be right in his hands
LAKELAND, Fla. — Even some of the best hitters need a tweak here or there.
Rafael Devers is coming off a season in which he added a second Silver Slugger to his résumé after hitting .271/.351/.500 with an .851 OPS and 33 homers.
“The fear that Raffy puts in the opposing pitcher is a different type of fear,” said Devers’s close friend and former teammate Xander Bogaerts during the Sox’ visit to San Diego last year.
Yet despite that fear and the results it brought Devers, something felt different about the third baseman’s season at the plate last year.
He didn’t have one of his typical summer streaks where no matter what he saw, pitchers couldn’t get him out.
Some of it entailed Devers’s need to adjust to being the focal point of an offense that once featured Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, and Mookie Betts. Opponents would go into a series last year with Devers’s name highlighted on their scouting reports.
The other component related to the evolution of the game. Stuff is just better.
“What these kids see on a daily basis is just stupid,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
Devers always set his hands high, just above his helmet, during his setup. Then when the pitcher went into his motion, he slowly lowered his hands, syncing them in the hitter’s slot, before initiating his load and going forward toward the ball.
Yet Devers got caught in between a lot — too out in front or too late. So he decided to lower his hands this spring, placing them near the letters. This helped to simplify his load, slowing down his thought process, and, thus, having his hands ready to fire through the zone.
“I think for him the root of it is consistency,” said Red Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse. “When we can get a good-to-very-good Rafael Devers, more often than not, he’s going to be in the MVP conversation, which is our goal for him.”
Only special hitters can have so many different movements in their setup and still be on time, which is why Devers was still able to compile more hardware for a shelf at his home in the Dominican Republic. That said, Devers’s movements last year became too exaggerated, in part, because he was trying to do too much to catch up with velocity. He became overzealous, throwing his mechanics out of sorts.
“As much of it was shortening up the move, we’ve seen as a hitting staff it has quieted his body a lot now,” said Fatse. “We feel like that’s where some of the bigger moves tend to take place. When his momentum and his body gets really going. He kind of stretched out, so to speak, and he gets long, so just trying to keep him more compact as long as we can.”
The long swing led to Devers becoming pull-happy last season. His ability to backspin a ball to the opposite field with authority escaped him. Case in point: Devers did not hit an opposite-field homer from June 10 to Sept. 15. So far this spring, Devers has two homers, both to the opposite field.
“We’ve been very open about talking about that with him,” said Fatse. “His advantage, especially at Fenway Park, is that he can mis-hit balls that go to the fence. He can be late and hit home runs and doubles. So a lot of it’s just getting back to making that the strength for him.”
Since pitchers supply much of the power with the significant uptick in velocity, hitters’ movements have become more simplified without sacrificing much power.
That will be the case especially for Devers, who has some of the quickest hands in baseball.
“We see around the league, all the good hitters now have their hands closer to their shoulder,” said Cora.
Devers has used his voice more this spring. He has called out ownership for not adding talent around him. He has made it known what his expectations are for his Sox club despite the outside noise picking them to finish last in the American League East for a third straight season.
Ultimately, the noise will have to come from Devers’s bat, as it always has. The adjustment of his hands from high to low gives the Sox confidence that his skill set will be amplified.
“He knows he can just touch a ball and it can go 400 feet,” said Fatse. “It’s about maximizing contact and using the whole field.”