Off-Season Issues: The Left Side of the Infield

There isn’t a bigger problem for the Red Sox to solve than the left side of the infield. The Red Sox have Xander Bogaerts at shortstop and Rafael Devers at third base and both are fantastic hitters. Both are popular in the clubhouse and with the fanbase, and with good reason. The problem is, both are not good defensively, and their lack of defensive acumen is hurting the team. What can the team do to fix the problem? Let’s get into it.

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So let’s start by saying that Devers and Bogaerts are both fantastic hitters. That’s the reason we’re even having this conversation in the first place. Bogaerts was the fifth best hitting shortstop in baseball in 2021 by FanGraphs’ wRC+, behind Fernando Tatis, Jr, Trea Turner, Brandon Crawford, and Carlos Correa. Over the last four seasons (to pick a larger sample), Bogaerts is the second-best hitting shortstop in baseball behind only Tatis. Bogaerts also leads all of baseball, shortstops and all other positions, in HAP (Handsome Above Replacement), so take that, Carlos Correa.

Devers is on that same level, hitting-wise even if he doesn’t score quite as highly in HAP (neither do I, for the record). Devers was the third-best third baseman in baseball by wRC+ last season, a percentage point behind Austin Riley of Atlanta and three behind Jose Ramirez of Cleveland. Over the past three seasons (I picked a smaller sample because Devers is a younger player), Devers is the fifth-best hitting third baseman in baseball (again, by wRC+). Devers is also going to be 25 years old next season. You want to make room for a guy like that.

The combination of the two is in the discussion for best-hitting left side of the infield in baseball, comparable to the Dodgers set of Corey Seager and Justin Turner, the Astros duo of Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman, and the Padres’ Tatis, Jr. and Manny Machado. Needless to say but not so needless that I won’t actually say it, they provide lots of value to the Red Sox, both on and off the field.

Now here’s the problem. The Red Sox team defense is quite stinky and a big part of that odor is coming from the left side of the infield. By StatCast’s Outs Above Average (OAA), Bogaerts was second to last among shortstops with -10 OAA in 2021. That was worse than Gleybar Torres’ performance, which caused the Yankees to move him to second base because they didn’t think he couldn’t handle shortstop anymore.

Devers isn’t any better than Bogaerts by OAA. In fact, he’s worse. Of the 43 third basemen who qualify (i.e. have played enough innings at the position), Devers is dead last at -13 OAA. Their problems are different - Bogaerts has very little range but sure hands, while Devers has good range for a third baseman but is highly error-prone - but they end up in about the same place.

By no means are the Red Sox defensive problems placed solely at the feet of Bogaerts and Devers, but together they make up perhaps the most damaging and complicated part of the problem. They hit so well that they need to stay in the lineup, but they give back too much of that value when they’re in the field.

So that’s the problem. How do you fix it? The first thing you could do is nothing. The argument goes thusly: the Red Sox are coming off an ALCS appearance with Bogaerts and Devers on the left side of the infield. Clearly the team can win with their defense because their offense is so good, especially if the front office plans for this and props up the team elsewhere.

That’s not necessarily wrong, and I do think that might be the direction the team goes in, whether because they want to or because they don’t really end up with a choice.

That said, the goal is to get better, and that’s not likely to happen if the team simply makes no changes. There is a sub-argument here, which is that Devers could get better - his problems are in some way more fixable than Bogaerts. It’s more difficult to make that same sub-argument for Bogaerts. In fact the opposite, Bogaerts getting worse defensively, is likely to happen as he ages. His range is very unlikely to improve as he passes 30, and so more batted balls will sneak through the left side of the infield for run-scoring hits, instead of inning-ending outs.

While it doesn’t sound like the most promising, circumstances could force the team to follow this path in 2022, though I don’t think it’s sustainable much beyond that.

The next option is to play Position Switch-A-Roo. Move Devers to first! Move Bogaerts to third! Move Bogaerts to third! Move Devers to second! Move them both to bullpen catcher! Yee HAW!!!

Again, there might be something to this. Switching players to easier positions on the field, ones they’re more suited for, is generally a good idea. But it’s problematic in the specific. Bogaerts could be moved off of shortstop, but he’s a star shortstop who can opt-out of his contract after 2023. If the Red Sox hope to keep him around, pissing him off by moving him off the most important position in the infield isn’t a great way to go about it. The Red Sox could offer Bogaerts a six year, $180 million contract extension (or whatever the number happens to be) to move to second base (or third or bullpen catcher) next season. And maybe he takes it. Or maybe it upsets him and we’ve got a situation where the star shortstop is angry at the team and it causes a big mess. Not a situation Red Sox fans would be familiar with, but still.

But maybe you have to do that anyway.

Devers is, in a way, more complicated. With Bogaerts there are multiple positions you could conceivably move him to, but with Devers there’s really only one and that’s first base. That’s fine, except that the team already has Bobby Dalbec. OK, you say, whatever. Switch Dalbec and Devers. Or trade Dalbec for… something. There. Job done. Right, except the Red Sox best prospect is Tristan Casas, a potential middle-of-the-order bat who just so happens to play first base and is likely to start next season in Triple-A and make his major league debut shortly thereafter. You could trade Casas, too, but teams aren’t in the habit of giving up good, cheap talent, and Chaim Bloom isn’t in that habit times a billion. You could trade Devers, but if you’re going to do that, you probably need to do it before you downgrade him by moving him to first base.

Back to Bogaerts for a moment. I mentioned moving him to second base as a possible solution, and maybe that works. It worked wonders with Marcus Semien in Toronto and with Trea Turner after he was dealt to the Dodgers. But Bogaerts problem is his range, not his arm. The range requirements at second base aren’t altogether different from those of shortstop, you just have a shorter, easier throw to make after you get the ball. The problem for Bogaerts is his range is preventing him from getting to the ball in the first place, so moving him to second base might not fix his problem. He might be more of a third baseman, and if that’s true, then you’re moving Devers to first and creating a logjam at that position while creating a huge hole at the most important position in the infield.

You can see how all this might cause your head to spin off your neck.

Complicating everything is the fact that the team is dealing with both a timeline for team control over the players in question and with the fact that each way they handle this will impact a large portion of their existing roster including prospects, and direct the spending of millions upon millions of dollars. So, you know, no pressure.

I mentioned Bogaerts’ contract, which has an opt-out after the 2022 season, an opt-out that he will absolutely 100 percent use unless something drastically changes next season. Devers is under team control via arbitration through 2023, leaving him a 27-year-old free agent with something like 200 homers to his name. Namely, not cheap.

The best possible scenario is probably something like Devers improves defensively enough to remain at third base and Bogaerts is amenable to moving to second base and, despite my inclinations, it works for him. That leaves room for Casas at first, or Schwarber, or Dalbec, or whomever they decide to stash there because he can hit like all heck. If that’s the plan though, this is an awful good offseason to begin to implement it because not only does Bogaerts have just a single season remaining before his opt-out but this year’s free agent market is flush with star shortstops.

While it might be ideal from a 2022 baseball standpoint to field an infield of Devers at third, Carlos Correa at short, and Bogaerts at second, that’s potentially a $70 million infield, not a situation this particular front office or ownership group has shown any inclination towards approving.

The last option is a more destructive one, namely trade ‘em all. Bogaerts is a tough one to deal because his long term contract, though a bargain, contains the opt-out after this season, so that makes him difficult to properly value in trade. Conversely, Devers has a ton of value and if the Red Sox don’t think he can play third base long term this is the perfect time to maximize it in trade.

There are a lot of potential options on the table. So far Chaim Bloom has shown himself to be a shrewd operator. The Rays, the front office from which he comes, aren’t one to show sentimentality. Reaching the ALCS was fun, and Bloom may want to run it back next season with as much of the 2021 team as he can, something he indicated in his post-season press conference. However, circumstances might force his hand. All of which is to say this may turn out to be an off-season of more roster turnover than many Red Sox fans are expecting.

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