There's a reason the Red Sox opened the season with Rafael Devers batting third in a lineup that includes Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, and Xander Bogaerts: they believed his offensive ceiling could surpass all of them.
Now we know why.
With the eyes of Red Sox fans understandably focused on rookie Michael Chavis, Devers has, first quietly and more recently very loudly, made an announcement of his own: I'm the best young hitter in baseball.
In Sunday's 4-1 victory over the Houston Astros, Devers delivered the signature shot of the afternoon, a towering home run to center off of a Justin Verlander fastball, just one day after he launched a moonshot so high, it struck the Minute Maid Park roof for a double instead of an upper-deck home run.
Since blasting his first home run of the season on May 3, Devers has been a monster. He's hitting .375 with seven homers and 20 RBIs in 20 games. His OPS during that time is a robust 1.090. Oh, and he hasn't made an error.
"You see the scoreboard and you see who's leading the league in hard-hit balls and it's not the usual guys," manager Alex Cora told reporters. "It's like, Rafael Devers."
Speaking to reporters before Sunday's game, Cora was giddy over Devers' development. Devers does indeed lead MLB with 89 hard-hit balls, but it's about so much more than that. He's hitting .330, good for third in the American League, and he's doing it while punishing the ball. He has also taken some early defensive struggles to heart, as he illustrated in the third inning on Sunday with a brilliant barehanded stab to erase Carlos Correa at first and keep Alex Bregman at third with one out.
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"We don't have time to talk about it," Cora said. "We need hours to talk about this, but I think it's just confidence, structure, I don't know, man, honestly, and I know it sounds weird but when we cut his hair, I was like, he cleaned it up. I was like, you know, one of those that he, we talk about his offseason and what he did in the Dominican and then obviously we made an adjustment and we went him to Fort Myers early.
"He's all in, man. I think it's just a matter of what happened last year. When we sent him to that rehab assignment, it was a long one and I think something clicked there. Not only as a player but as the individual. He understands that he needs to take care of his body and we talk about his errors and all that and we haven't talked about that in a while. You see the plays that he makes and he's made some adjustments and he's been amazing."
Still only 22 years old, Devers provided a taste of what he might be able to do when he took a 103-mph Aroldis Chapman fastball out to the opposite field in Yankee Stadium in 2017. On Sunday, Verlander left a 94 mph fastball over the middle of the plate, slightly outside, and Devers absolutely murdered it over the 404-foot sign in center.
Devers has been hammering everything since the start of the season, but he's finally hitting the ball in the air. It took him 33 games to hit a home run because he wasn't lifting the ball. But once he added loft to his screaming exit velocity, the result has been the last month. Devers has 13 extra-base hits in his last 20 games.
"You see him breathing in the batter's box and talking to himself," Cora said. "He's at second and the whole dugout over there is paying attention to him because they feel like he was relaying signs. He's 22, he's into the game. It was fun. At one point in the game yesterday, I don't know if it was the last inning, there's a lot of stuff going on and he comes here and he asks for gum. He's having a blast. I think physically everybody saw it in spring training and we're very proud of him.
"He's been great. He wants to be great. He's been saying all along he wants to be a complete player and right now we're playing in front of the best third basemen in the big leagues with Alex (Bregman), but I know a lot of people are talking about Raffy too in that category. He's stepping up. He's only 22. I mean, I can't keep talking about Raffy. I'm very proud of him."
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