Rafael Devers is walking more than ever, which is a good sign for his future

New York Times

20-06-2025

Pull up a list of major leaguers who have played 1,000 games before turning 29. Sort them by adjusted OPS (OPS+), which accounts for league-wide scoring levels and ballparks. Focus on the first 200 names. Now you have a list of All-Stars, with a lot of Hall of Famers mixed in.
That's the elevator pitch for Rafael Devers. Among players who played a lot of games before turning 30, Devers was among the best hitters. He's keeping company with Al Kaline and Dave Winfield, if you're looking to compare him with Hall of Famers. He's keeping company with Jack Clark and Reggie Smith, if you're looking to compare him to Hall of Very Gooders with a Giants connection. It's a list of players who can provide supporting evidence for whatever narrative you want to tell. If you're worried about Devers' limited defensive ability preventing him from aging gracefully, Kent Hrbek and Greg Luzinski are on the list. If you're projecting a Hall of Fame career, you can tally up the inductees with a lower OPS+ through their age-28 season. There are 35 who hit better than Devers, and there are 44 who hit worse.
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None of this tells us how Devers will age, or how much of a bargain or albatross he'll be toward the end of his contract. It's just another way to say, 'so far, so good.' What he's already done is impressive, and while he's not quite as young as his cherubic face might suggest, he's still in the prime of his career. Let's update the description, then: So far, so great.
Devers got on this list by being consistent. Check his slash line since 2019 (excluding the 60-game 2020 season):
2019: .311/.361/.555 (132 OPS+)
2021: .279/.352/.538 (134 OPS+)
2022: .295/.358/.521 (141 OPS+)
2023: .271/.351/.500 (126 OPS+)
2024: .272/.354/.516 (142 OPS+)
The batting average fluctuated a little bit because that's what they do, but the overall production was remarkably steady. Even more impressive, Devers had at least 600 plate appearances in all five of those seasons. With continued health, he'll be the best hitter on the Giants for the next several years if he keeps hitting like this.
A simple story that doesn't have to get more complicated. A 28-year-old has had a very good career to this point, and if nothing changes, he'll continue having one. That 'if nothing changes' is doing a lot of work, of course. He'll need to stay healthy for the back end of his contract to not be a huge problem. He'll need to follow expected aging curves and keep hitting into his early 30s. He'll need to keep hitting for power.
There's another reason why 'if nothing changes' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Something might have already changed.
Devers is staying in the strike zone more than he ever has, and he's walking a lot more as a result. He has the fourth-highest walk rate in baseball, and he's walking more than Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber or Aaron Judge. He literally walked the very second I typed the period at the end of the previous sentence. He's a walking machine these days, and both chase rate and walk rate are statistics that stabilize quickly, so it doesn't have to be small-sample shenanigans.
This isn't just important because it appeals to walk fetishists and scratches that 'Moneyball' itch. It's important because over Devers' career, this has been the missing piece. It's been the only missing piece, other than speed. He's been a great hitter over his career, but he hasn't been a generational talent. He's giving himself a chance at the Hall of Fame, but it's hard to say he's on a Hall of Fame pace. He's a three-time All-Star, but he's never had a top-10 MVP finish, and he certainly isn't a superstar outside of New England.
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The one thing preventing him from all of the above: patience. The players who make fewer outs while also clobbering extra-base hits are the generational talents, the MVPs who are on Hall of Fame paces. Devers is an outstanding hitter when he sports a .350-ish OBP. If he can get that into the .400s consistently, though, he could be a top-five hitter in baseball. Maybe he's already there.
This is, of course, the part of the article where I hedge my bets and present a counterpoint to all of those fun ideas. Devers is walking more, but he's also making less contact when he swings. A lot less contact, with the lowest contact percentage and highest swinging-strike rate of his career. The biggest change is with his swings and misses at pitches in the strike zone. He's swinging through a lot more strikes.
There are a lot of possible reasons for this, and not all of them are bad. It could be a conscious decision to make even better contact, even if it comes with less contact. But the likelier scenario is that Devers doesn't like all this swinging and missing, and he'll continue working to fix it. If he gets back to his career averages, that will mean more balls in play and, presumably, fewer walks.
Is that a pretty weak counterpoint? Feels like a pretty weak counterpoint, but it's all I got. The idea of Devers maintaining a top-five walk rate should absolutely thrill Giants fans. There are very justified concerns about the money that's now committed to a 1B/DH-type throughout his early and mid-30s, but a lot of that has to do with the good-not-great OBPs that Devers has had in the past. He's a fantastic hitter with a .350 OBP, but it's easy to imagine that kind of OBP dipping closer to the league average without warning, then settling comfortably below in subsequent seasons. With a high-OBP batter, the aging curve looks a lot friendlier. If he can maintain a .400-ish OBP throughout his peak, then it wouldn't be unthinkable for a 35-year-old Devers to have numbers similar to the ones he put up when he was 25.
We're still in the first half of the season, which means this is something to watch, not something to expect. A couple months with a few more walks isn't enough to guarantee that Devers has leveled up. But if he's really found something with how he tracks pitches, if he's showing off a new and sustainable skill, it's hard to overstate how encouraging of a sign that would be.
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And if he goes back to the hitter he's always been, that's pretty cool, too. That's the best part of this. We're not talking about something that's turning a mediocre player into a solid regular; we're talking about something that could turn an All-Star into an MVP. If it doesn't stick, he's just a 28-year-old All-Star again.
If you think walks are unexciting — and you should — maybe this will change your mind a little. Now you can pump your fist with every good take and checked swing. You can howl with delight when an umpire flinches but doesn't make the call. Rafael Devers currently has one of the best walk rates in baseball. If he keeps that up for a few seasons, he won't just be one of the best hitters in baseball: He'll be a bargain.