For Sure Not An All Star Rafael Devers Hits Two Homers, Drives In Six Runs Against The Blue Jays
I’m gonna level with you for a second — it’s pretty difficult to get all that excited about the Red Sox putting up a 10-spot when they’re beating the Blue Jays, the standings are what they are, and the bullpen once again wasn’t stellar. I’ll give you that.
However, I will say that watching Rafael Devers continue to flourish as one of the game’s youngest stars is pretty damn exciting. Two batters into this game, the Red Sox had a lead because the 13-year-old hit a two-run bomb into the second deck. It was his first of two homers on the night, as Devers would launch another to the opposite field in the eighth, two of his four hits on the night, while driving in six of Boston’s 10 runs.
One of the many things that I love about Alex Cora is how candid he is when speaking about his own players’ performances, good or bad. After the game, Cora spoke about how Devers got caught up in his league-leading batting average, and that the third baseman was trying to swing at everything to get as many hits as he could. On May 26, Devers was hitting as high as .330 to set the pace for the American League.
Over his next 20 games, Devers hit .239 with a .738 OPS. During that 20-game stretch, Devers was swinging and missing at 23.9% of the pitches he was seeing. Since then, he’s cut that down to 18%, which means that he’s making contact 82% of that time. In the 10 games since he’s changed his overly aggressive approach, Devers is hitting .525 with a 1.462 OPS, 3 homers and 7 doubles. Pretty good.
On April 24, the Red Sox came into play with a 9-15 record. That day, Boston scored 11 runs to beat the Tigers. In the 61 games since then, the Red Sox are leading the American League in batting average (.285), first in the majors in on-base percentage (.358), second to the Twins in slugging percentage (.487), and trail only the Rockies for the most runs scored per game in the MLB (6.13). For as disappointing of a first half as this has been for Boston, you cannot blame the offense, as they’ve once again been one of the best in baseball.
As far as blaming the pitching goes, you cannot point a finger at David Price, who has been outstanding in 2019. Price held the Jays to two runs on four hits over six innings, striking out seven. He did walk four batters, which likely prevented him from going seven innings. Over his last 13 starts, Price has a 2.85 ERA and a 1.12 WHIP with 76 strikeouts in 66.1 innings. Over that stretch, Price has the sixth lowest ERA in the American League.
You can, however, blame the bullpen. Even in a game that did not feature a save situation for Boston, the Red Sox bullpen made it interesting. Colten Brewer came in for the seventh and gave up a bomb, although he did have a very nice month of June. Then, we saw the major league debut of Trevor Kelley, a 36th round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox back in 2015. Kelley gave up three earned runs on a couple of hits, but I’m more than willing to chalk this one up to big league debut jitters.
For Pawtucket this year, Kelley had an 0.96 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP with 34 strikeouts in 37.2 innings. By no means is he a guarantee to come up to the big leagues and be a savior, but he’s an interesting option who performed really well at Triple-A, costs the Red Sox virtually nothing to have on their big league roster, and cannot possibly be worse than some of the arms they’ve been trotting out there recently. I’m looking forward to seeing more from him.
In the middle game, it’s Chris Sale versus Jacob Waguespack. Sale is coming off a clunker where he gave up five earned runs to the White Sox. The last time Sale gave up four earned runs or more in a start this year, he threw a complete game shutout with 12 strikeouts, so there’s that. Waguespack is a 25-year-old rookie, making his second big league start. In his big league debut, Waguespack went four innings against the Rays, giving up two earned runs on three hits while striking out seven.
Final score: Red Sox 10, Blue Jays 6