Is Rafael Devers Having A Good Season?

I mean, yes, but

Few things in baseball are better than watching Rafael Devers hit. It’s as if the world’s most talented manic baby (somewhere there’s a list of manic babies, ordered by talent) was put into a batters box, handed a baseball bat, and knew instinctively what to do.

Devers excels at the things you’d excel at if you were given a baseball bat and had no prior knowledge of the sport. When the ball comes in from the pitcher he swings. And he swings hard. Simple as that, really.

Devers is paid good money to swing. Really though, it’s more about what happens after he swings. Because when Rafael Devers swings, the ball gets hit hard. It’s kinda his thing. Truth be told, if he didn’t hit the ball hard, he’d be a marginal major league player. A marginal major leaguer who talks to himself in expletive-laced Spanish between pitches, but a marginal major leaguer just the same.

But that’s not quite fair. You can’t take away someone’s best skill and then say without that they wouldn’t be any good. That’s like saying if Steph Curry couldn’t shoot he’d be a marginal basketball player, or if Elon Musk couldn’t set billions of dollars on fire on a lark he’d be a marginal human being. You can’t take away the prime skill. It’s what makes the thing go in the first place.

Devers’ prime skill is still with him this season, as he’s been torching the ball. Baseball Savant says his torchings are better on average than the torchings of 96 percent of hitters in the sport. Unsurprising as it tracks with the rest of his career up to this point. Torching the ball repeatedly better than almost anyone is what makes Devers Devers.

Thing is, it’s not all there is to hitting. The best hitters hit the ball really hard very frequently (check!) but they also do other stuff, like work the pitcher and take walks. That’s where our hero falls down. Devers doesn’t walk. It’s not like he never walks, he’s not Jeremy Pena or Bo Bichette after all… though actually when you look it up, he kinda is Bo Bichette and Jeremy Pena, at least this season.

And that’s kinda the problem. Bichette and Pena both are fine players, but they both possess a fundamental flaw that limits their offensive upside. Neither draws walks at even a league average pace. This means they often fail to do the main job of a hitter, namely get on base. The best hitters get lots of hits and lots of hits for extra bases (hitting for power), but no hitter can get hits all the time. That’s where walks come in. Walks are a way to get on base when you can’t hit. They’re not as good as a hit, but they’re darn close and way better than a weak ground out to second base. If you’ve read Moneyball you’ll know what I’m saying.

The best hitters hit for average, power, and get on base. Devers can do the first two, but has struggled to do the third, just as Bichette and Pena have. The best hitters know the strike zone, and by not swinging at pitches outside the zone they can either take a free pass to first, or force the pitcher to come into the zone with a more hittable pitch, which the hitter can then hit hard. Devers doesn’t do that. He swings at everything. Strikes, balls, balls in the dirt, at his shoulders, a foot outside. Not all the time, not every pitch, but enough, and in fact too many.

This approach leads to more outs. It might add a bit in terms of power at the end of the day, but it unquestionably hurts the bottom line come closing time. Why? In effect it takes the pitcher off the hook. Pitchers can throw hard-to-hit pitches outside the zone to Devers knowing Devers will offer at them from the moment he steps into the batters box. Making a living swinging at pitchers’ pitches is a tough living to make. Devers makes it, but it would be an easier and more productive living if he could reduce the number of pitches outside the zone that he offers at.

The last two seasons Devers had taken positive steps in this direction. He raised his walk rate above league average in 2021. It dropped in 2022 to about league average but that’s totally fine. Higher is better, but generally this isn’t just about walks, it’s about Devers forcing pitchers to throw him better pitches. This season has been a step back in this department.

Often as great hitters age into their prime seasons, they improve at the subtle parts of hitting. They learn the strike zone better if not perfectly (not everyone is Juan Soto). They reduce if not eliminate swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. Devers isn’t really doing those things.

He’s still an extremely productive hitter, don’t get me wrong. And it’s still quite early in the season, so his numbers now aren’t and won’t be his numbers by the time August rolls around let alone October. There’s still time for improvement here. But for now, Devers is chasing a ton of pitches outside the strike zone and he’s missing a lot of those pitches. Somehow his strikeout rate hasn’t suffered much as a result, perhaps because if you take three huge hacks at the first three pitches you see in an at-bat you’re likely to make some kind of contact with at least one of them. And he’s still hitting the ball extremely hard. Somehow his batting average on balls in play (BABIP), a number typically around .300, is at .240, so you could make the case Devers has been getting unlucky and should actually be having a better season than he is, even without many walks. This is supported by Devers’ expected batting average at Baseball Savant.

Perhaps this is all on me, though. I had hoped that as Devers aged he’d get to be a smarter hitter, to add guile to his quiver along with sheer bat-on-ball violence. And maybe that will still happen, but so far the first month plus of his age-26 season hasn’t shown any signs of it. And in fact if anything he’s regressed in this department. It’s a bit disappointing, and it makes me slightly worried about the long term for Devers, as players with his skillset typically decline earlier (it’s hard to keep making strong contact with pitches way outside the strike zone as you age).

For now Devers remains the ultimate ‘see ball, crush ball’ hitter. He’s a bundle of fun, as fun as any hitter on the team and indeed as most hitters in baseball. He’s more Must See TV than any other Red Sox hitter. But there’s still another gear in there. He’s so good now, but he could actually be better.

Thanks for reading.