HOUSTON — Rafael Devers will turn 22 years old on Wednesday, when the Red Sox play Game 2 of the World Series at Fenway Park.
With his decisive three-run blast off Justin Verlander in the clinching Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on Thursday night, Devers not only punched the Red Sox’ ticket to the World Series, but punched his own name into the history books.
If Devers goes deep on the last day of his 21st year in Game 1, that would mark his fourth career playoff game with a long ball, and tie him for the most by any player before his 22nd birthday.
The only players with four playoff games with a home run before turning 22 are Mickey Mantle, Miguel Cabrera and Bryce Harper — one Hall of Famer and two more who could join him.
Maybe it seems like Devers’ name shouldn’t be on such an exclusive list. He had a largely disappointing sophomore season, hitting just .241 with 21 homers and an MLB-high 24 errors. Three times he was placed on the disabled list. He was once banished to the minors, and by the time he got back he had lost his starting job to Eduardo Nunez, a 31-year-old journeyman utility infielder with a bad knee.
But Devers didn’t look like a broken player in the middle of a disappointing season on Thursday night.
“You have to give him a lot of credit,” said Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers. “When the chips are down he went to work and went after it. There were some down times, some growing pains, and he went in there to work to make some changes. Not big changes, but cosmetic changes and more mental changes than physical.”
Devers has long been a free swinger, and in this era in baseball, players who are willing to expand the zone repeatedly tend to be exposed.
The Red Sox asked him to change. And for a player who made a minor league career out of hitting bad pitches out of the park, it wasn’t easy.
His first two at-bats against Verlander, Devers saw nothing but fastballs, and most of them up. That’s why Devers didn’t start in Game 1; Cora thought the youngster might be exposed by those high fastballs.
But by the third at-bat Devers had a different swing.
Verlander gave him a 98-mph first-pitch fastball on the top of the strike zone and slightly inside, and Devers stayed inside the ball and drove it to left field.
“His effort level was down,” Hyers said. “It was more controlled. You can just tell, he’s thinking, ‘They’re feeding me a lot of fastballs and coming at me with it.’ And instead of overswinging, he was trying to just work through the baseball and get the barrel there. We know his strength level.”
It was on par with J.D. Martinez’ ability to take inside pitches to the opposite field.
This is how Devers can become the player the Red Sox hope he can be, the MVP candidate David Ortiz predicted before the 2018 season.
Yes, the power is impressive. But if he can also show some restraint, his potential could be unlocked.
Players who hit .240 with 20 homers are a dime a dozen. There were 83 of them this season. And while some teams accept those types of all-or-nothing players, the Red Sox haven’t.
“We play in an era that you hit .210, you hit 35 home runs and drive in 70, and it’s acceptable,” manager Alex Cora said. “And our guys, they put the ball in play. They take pride of that. And when you put the ball in play good things happen. I now understand that sometimes a strikeout is just an out and there’s certain situations that you burn off trying to put the ball in play and see what happens. And we’ve been doing that throughout the year. We’ve been pretty good with men in scoring position, but I think it’s because they do put the ball in play.”
Of the 10 playoff teams this year, the Red Sox rank first by putting the ball in play on 41.5 percent of their swings. No playoff team since the 2015 Texas Rangers put balls in play that often.
“We stuck to our plan,” Mookie Betts said. “We didn’t try to hit home runs. We didn’t try to do anything that we didn’t do all year. It was one of those things where, take the single, take a walk, take another single, now we have guys on base for our big hit.”
Thursday night, it was Devers.
He’s had a few big hits in his postseason career. And if he continues to develop, there should be plenty more.
