Answering questions about the Rafael Devers trade

New York Times

18-06-2025

On the way back to my tent, my phone buzzed and scared the hell out of me. It was a dedicated camera and nothing more after two days of no service, but somewhere between the lake and the campground was a patch of land that satellites had not forgotten. A few messages got through, including a push notification from the MLB app.
'GIANTS TO ACQUIRE RAFAEL DEVERS'
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About 361 days out of the year — Christmas included — the response would have been immediate and battle-tested. Help with a quick story to get something on the site as fast as possible, then follow up with a longer, more measured response. Then investigate and write about different angles and ripple effects over the next few days. It's standard operating procedure, and it has worked for me when covering every stunning transaction since Barry Zito.
About four days out of the year, I camp in the woods without any phone service. After reading the official MLB.com story, the satellites forsook me and left me without service again. I couldn't even pull up Devers' page on Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs. Instead of mountains of takes, responses to takes and responses to those responses, I was left with nothing but mountains. And questions. A lot of questions.
It would be about 70 hours until I got back to the internet, which might as well have been 70 years. All I had was my panicked brain, rolling the same questions around over and over until they were as shiny and polished as a gemstone. Here are some of those questions.
The questions were all polished, but that doesn't mean they were good. This gets top billing because it was the most frequent, by far. It's still in there a few minutes before Devers' franchise debut. A couple of months ago, I thought about writing up a 'The Giants should trade for Rafael Devers' article, but I dismissed the idea immediately because it was too silly and unrealistic. Trades that massive and complicated simply don't happen.
Until they do.
The second-most common question, although it's an ultra-condensed and composite version of several questions. There are a lot of questions under this umbrella, ranging from 'Why did the Giants feel like they had to do this?' to 'Why did ownership approve the biggest financial commitment in franchise history so soon after spending on the biggest free agent in franchise history (who isn't exactly working out)?'
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There are a lot of snarky answers that would work here, including the recursive 'Because it's Rafael Devers, stupid,' but it's the honest answer that works best. The Giants made this massive, risky, bold, stunning trade because it was their best chance to get a premier hitter in his prime. It wasn't their only chance — $600 million, a 50 percent ownership stake and two of the Mission Rock buildings (you pick 'em) would probably sway Kyle Tucker and others — but it was certainly their only chance that was entirely within the franchise's control. There were no competing bidders, fire-setting magistrates or mystery flights to Toronto. Here's a 28-year-old in his prime. Here's what it will take to get him. Press the button, and he's yours.
That doesn't mean it was an offer the Giants couldn't refuse. That doesn't mean there aren't parts of the deal that confuse or worry you. It's the simplest explanation of the deal, though, and it's probably the correct one. Over the next three, four or five seasons, Devers has a better chance to be one of the 20 best hitters in baseball than anyone else the Giants could have acquired. He's likelier to be a top-20 hitter than anyone in the minor leagues, and that's including every minor leaguer, not just Bryce Eldridge and others in the organization. Devers is likelier to provide more offense than any free agent who signs next offseason, the offseason after that and the offseason after that. He'll be the best position player traded over the next several years.
This doesn't mean Devers will be better than Eldridge over the next decade. It doesn't mean he'll be better than, say, Luis Robert Jr., a 27-year-old free-agent-to-be who will make hundreds and hundreds of millions less. It doesn't mean the Giants couldn't have gotten more value by spreading this money around over the next decade. It doesn't mean he'll outhit Wilmer Flores. It doesn't mean he'll outhit the Wilmer Flores who pitches in the Detroit Tigers organization.
For all the risk and uncertainty that comes with this move, it still comes with more certainty than any of the others the Giants could have made. The Giants will get 0.0 WAR from Bryce Harper, Shohei Ohtani, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge over the next decades. They were likely to get 0.0 WAR from the next under-30 superstars who entered free agency in their prime. It was still the Giants' best chance to add a 20-something who will hit in the middle of the order for a long time. No idea what their second-best chance was going to be, but it wasn't going to be close to this one.
This was answered in the introductory news conference. He'll DH a lot more this season, while taking grounders at first base. When he's ready for first, he'll play first.
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Worry about it when you get there. At the risk of repeating myself, there were 'What about Pablo Sandoval?' questions after Buster Posey was drafted, and they changed my mindset forever. Eldridge is a heckuva prospect, but he's still a 20-year-old player without a set position. His bat is far, far ahead of his glove, and he was always likelier to debut as a DH anyway.
If Major League Baseball had a DH in the 1960s, the Giants would have won at least one World Series, if not several. I'd like to think a harmonious arrangement for Devers and Eldridge over the next decade will be the karmic repayment for this.
Get the hitter first. Worry about the park effects later.
'Welcome to San Francisco, Mr. Devers' – Mike Krukow pic.twitter.com/tptUEkZ4sj
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 18, 2025
There's another way to phrase this question that makes it a good thing Devers is left-handed. The reason Harper isn't on the Giants had less to do with the ballpark and more with their late entry into the bidding, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a factor in the decision. It would have been a factor for the Giants in a Tucker pursuit this offseason. An agent or executive can allay the fears of a right-handed hitter looking to sign a contract. It's much harder to do with a left-hander.
The only way for the Giants to get a top-tier left-handed hitter, then, is to develop and/or trade for one. We'll see about the former. They pulled the trigger on the latter.
That written, Devers has a better chance than most lefties to thrive at Oracle Park. He's a fantastic opposite-field hitter, with more production to left and left-center than to right-center. That, combined with his ability to hit the ball much harder than his peers, gives him a fighting chance against Triples Alley and the marine layer.
In order: Don't care, no idea and we'll see.
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OK, there are reasonable concerns with the roughly $250 million left on Devers' contract. It will affect the Giants' willingness to commit to other players, whether through free agency or in-house extensions. Combined with the guaranteed money owed to Adames, Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee, it might even affect the Giants' ability to offer those kinds of contracts, which aren't words I've typed often.
As always, though, the logic starts to fray the more you pull at the thread. If you're worried about paying a player now, that's because you're worried the contract makes it less likely to pay a player in the future. Except that future player would also make it less likely the Giants could afford a different player in the more distant future.
If you keep playing this game, you end up without any players making a lot of money. You don't have great players, but if a 28-year-old, three-time All-Star on a big contract is suddenly available for a variety of reasons … buddy, you'll be in a perfect position to strike.
Another effective way to think about this is that an indelible image of the 2010 championship is of Aaron Rowand and Cody Ross falling to the ground in the outfield after the Game 5 win. That's one player making a lot of money for very little production, and another player who provided that production when another team just gave him to the Giants. Both contributed to the championship season.
Don't worry so much about baseball in the future. There's a lot of time for baseball to get drunk and make stuff up, like it always does.
Great question, and I'm not going to pretend it's not a concern. The Boston Red Sox signed a better defensive third baseman than Devers, and he was upset about the lack of communication before and after the move. A sudden injury opened a need at first base, and it was reasonable to think Devers could fill that hole, even if it was unreasonable to expect him to be happy about it. He was locked up to be a franchise player, and franchise players aren't typically jerked around like that.
It's clear the Giants care an awful lot about clubhouse dynamics, though. They have for years, with an unofficial No Turds™ policy that has spanned different front offices and coaching staffs. They didn't take these concerns lightly, and they did their due diligence on how Devers was as a teammate. He might not send Craig Breslow a birthday card, but he wasn't rankling his teammates while all the drama was going on. And he certainly wasn't rankling them when he signed his huge extension in the first place.
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The vast majority of Red Sox fans are incredibly upset about this trade. That says a lot about how he was perceived outside the clubhouse, but it also speaks to how recent these kinds of concerns are. If he was a turd from the beginning, there wouldn't have been enough warm and fuzzy feelings for a long-term extension in the first place.
No. Gotta hit them here.
There were a lot of questions rattling around my brain over the last several days, including 'Is it safe to eat the can of SPAM that sat in the 150-degree bear box for several days?' They cannot all be answered here. A lot of them are worthy of standalone articles, and there will be time for them.
There will be about eight years for them, give or take. So we'll end with the most obvious question of all.
Yep.