Red Sox Sign Rafael Devers for 11 Years, $331 Million

Actual good news!

In an off-season of disappointment and uncertainty, one that felt rudderless at times, the Red Sox finally picked a direction. They’re all in on Rafael Devers. The All Star third baseman agreed to an 11 year, $331 million contract extension to stay with Boston through his age-36 season. The deal reportedly does not contain any opt-out clauses nor does it include a no-trade clause.

So that’s it. The Red Sox did what they failed to do going back to Jon Lester, namely keep one of their homegrown stars in Boston longterm. So let’s talk about it!

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We’ll start with the good news. The Red Sox just locked up one of the best young hitters in baseball through his prime and into his mid-30s. Since he became a regular in 2018, Devers ranks 18th in baseball among qualified hitters in wRC+. Eighteenth is good because, as you know, there are a lot of hitters in baseball.

You don’t need to know how the stat is calculated to see the quality of the players Devers is grouped with. Everyone listed in that image above (which is taken from FanGraphs) is within a point either way of Devers. Expand a little bit and you can better see the level of player we’re talking about here. Devers is within five points of Mookie Betts, Julio Rodriguez, and Juan Soto, and ahead of Alex Bregman, Vlad Guerrero Jr, and Xander Bogaerts.

Rafael Devers has been an elite hitter in his career, and there should be more to come. That’s because the difference between most of the guys mentioned in the previous paragraph and Devers is age. Devers will be 26 in 2023, so his prime years (27-29) are still ahead of him, i.e. they’re not included yet. That’s not the case for most on that list. This contract doesn’t buy the end of a big name player’s career, as typically happens with big contracts. The years the Red Sox got are the ones you want.

There’s more to being a great baseball player than just hitting though. Presumably the Red Sox now see Devers as a third baseman long term, so it would help if he could remain there, especially with top prospect Triston Casas set to fill Devers only other potential defensive landing spot of first base. The news on Devers’ defense at third is good though, or at least it isn’t bad. Devers improved defensively in 2022, enough to approach league average at his position. Depending on your metric of choice, Devers was about league average or slightly below in 2022, which is, if not good, then at least not bad.

Devers improved via the eye test as well. He made far fewer obvious mistakes, and far fewer errors resulted. In fact, Devers made the same number of errors in 138 games in 2022 as he did in 57 games in 2020. That’s improvement. Errors aren’t necessarily the best way to judge defensive competence, but they’re a pretty good indicator of defensive incompetence. He’s probably never going to be a great fielder, and there is still room to improve, and there likely will always be room to improve, but if he can maintain his roughly league average level defensively, he’s going to be a huge asset to the team simply through their ability to pencil in his bat at third.

Devers isn’t Mookie Betts. He’s not a cerebral hitter, not a great baserunner, and he’s not going to add much value defensively. But man can he hit. And maybe it’s the excitement of the moment, but it feels like there could be more in there than what we’ve been privileged enough to see so far. If you look at Devers’ StatCast measurements, you can see he’s straight up elite when it comes to putting the barrel on a pitched ball.

Devers had a .990 OPS on August 2 after missing a few weeks with an injury. That injury sapped some of his power though, as he put up a .708 OPS the rest of the way. The totality of the season was still quite good, but it felt like a bit more health and we might’ve gotten a glimpse at Top 5 MVP Devers. Given the Red Sox level of commitment, they have to think that kind of outcome is still possible.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this deal doesn’t come without questions. Devers defense did improve in 2022, but one year is hardly a trend, and Devers had numerous seasons before ‘22 with negative defensive value. Those seasons led some to question his ability to stick at third base long term. Has one season definitively answered that question?

Further, Devers is a great hitter, but he’s not a controlled hitter. His quality of contact is fantastic, but he swings and misses a fair bit, including offering at a lot of pitches outside the strike zone. That leads to lower than optimal on-base numbers given his overall level of offensive ability. Those on-base numbers have improved a bit as he’s aged, but they’re not yet at an elite level.

I sort of mentioned it above, but I’ll say it again here: Devers isn’t the all-around player Betts is. He’s not the clubhouse leader Bogaerts is. He’s a great hitter who you should be able to be put at third base and leave there for a decade with great results when it’s his turn with the stick. But those expecting more from Devers, say in other non-hitting areas of his game, will likely be disappointed.

Could this deal turn bad? In the classical sense, sure. All deals come with some potential downside. Long term, big money deals come with a lot of potential downside for the club because the player is tied up for such a long time that there’s lots of time for things to go wrong. Devers could regress at third, and become unplayable there. He could, I suppose, regress at the plate. Although that one is harder to see happening, it could happen to anyone I suppose. The money is a lot and it’s the kind of money that teams will use as an excuse to avoid making other moves.

Even while admitting that kind of risk, and while admitting Devers isn’t perhaps the perfect player, it is good, nay great, to see the Red Sox make this kind of move and to take this kind of risk. There’s no reason, sitting here on my couch in January of 2023, to expect any of the downsides to happen any more than they might on any other long term contract. And the upside of continuing to have Rafael Devers on the Boston Red Sox is immense. It’s almost as high as the inverse is low. Losing him to free agency (like Bogaerts) or having to trade him to another team where he could continue to post All Star numbers (like Betts) would be devastating to the fanbase, but it would also be devastating to the Red Sox ability to win baseball games. Admit it or not, this team is still trying to dig itself out from under the Mookie Betts trade, and now in a catastrophic outcome for the franchise, they lost Xander Bogaerts for what amounts to a fourth round draft pick.

This deal isn’t just about Devers though it is very much about him. It’s also about the Red Sox proving to their fans, their players, and, heck, to themselves that they are still here and still committed to winning. And yes, it’s about a very frustrated, borderline furious fanbase, one sick of consuming everything Red Sox only to see the players they love the most walk out the door, or worse, get pushed out.

Devers now becomes the face of the franchise. He’s the guy. It’s his smiling mug you’ll see on, well, mugs. And on buses. And on the side of Fenway Park when you roll up for Opening Day. He’s going to be the player on the graphic when the Red Sox are on FOX’s game of the week or whatever it’s called. This is going to be the Rafael Devers Era.

It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t the kind of move a team makes when they’re not planning on competing. The Red Sox fouled things up with Xander Bogaerts and that sad fact will continue to cast a dark shadow over the franchise for the rest of the off-season (and, in all likeliness, for the length of his contract with the Padres). But now that Devers is in the fold, the team can start to look at other long term improvements. Perhaps the off-season still holds a few in store.

On the day Rafael Devers decided to stay in Boston forever it’s fair to look to the future of the Red Sox and maybe for the first time in a while, certainly in over a year, to see something promising, something worth paying attention to, something worth rooting for. And that just might be worth more than $331 million.

Thanks for reading.