The Red Sox start the second half riding a 10-game winning streak. How much — or how little — of it can be contributed to no longer having Rafael Devers?
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'I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season, we're looking back, and we've won more games than we otherwise would have,' said Breslow.
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The idea seemed far-fetched, particularly as the Red Sox offense spiraled in the initial weeks without Devers. But shockingly, on the heels of a 10-game winning streak leading into the All-Star break, the before-and-after comparison is now quite flattering to the Sox.
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With Devers, they were 37-36 (.507). Since the trade, they're 16-9 (.640), the third best mark in the majors behind the Brewers (17-6) and Blue Jays (17-8).
Their record is better without Devers. Does that mean they're now a better team? Members of the Sox weren't eager to explore the subject.
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'I'm not going to touch that,' said starter Walker Buehler.
'I'm not going to give a definitive answer on that,' said shortstop Trevor Story.
'I do know we're a different team,' allowed outfielder Rob Refsnyder. 'But I don't know.'
The reluctance to offer a yes-or-no assessment is understandable. Players didn't want to come across as disrespectful of Devers as a person or player. They also understand that correlation is not causation, and that it's usually misleading to attribute collective performance to the presence or absence of one individual.
So, a different framing might be more productive: What's changed to allow the team to succeed, and were those changes related to Devers?
The biggest change has been starting pitching. A group that — outside of Garrett Crochet — struggled to deliver five solid innings has dominated opponents over the last month.
How the Red Sox have compared since trading Rafael Devers to the Giants.
Amin Touri
What about the lineup? Surprisingly, what had been a good offense with Devers (4.8 runs per game, fifth in MLB) has been better since the trade, averaging 5.5 runs per contest (second). Much of that production came during a six-game Vesuvius against the woebegone Nationals and Rockies, but there's more to the surge than the opponents.
First, while Devers was as impactful a run-producer as there was in baseball before the trade, during the five-game Red Sox winning streak that immediately preceded the deal, the Rays and Yankees had identified ways to limit his impact.
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He'd gone 3 for 18 with six strikeouts and two walks in 21 plate appearances over that stretch, driving in just one run – a solo homer in his final at-bat with the Sox. The two teams beat him repeatedly with fastballs (47 percent whiff rate) over that stretch.
'Teams were pitching around him a little bit,' said Refsnyder.
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Meanwhile, Devers's struggles in San Francisco — he's hitting .202/.330/.326 with a 31 percent strikeout rate for the Giants — make it difficult to say what he'd be contributing in Boston, particularly given that he's been
'I can't really judge anybody on [that small sample],' said Giants pitcher Logan Webb. 'It's a guy that had to pack up his stuff and move across the country. I think these things take time. He's here for the next eight years, nine years, so no one's really worried about anything like [him struggling].'
Rafael Devers is batting just .202 with two home runs while striking out 34 times in his 109 plate appearances since joining the Giants.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Even so, it's interesting to contemplate how Devers's departure impacted the rest of the roster. At the time of the trade,
Had Devers not been traded, might Anthony — 2 for 27 at the time Abreu was activated — have been optioned to Triple A once Abreu came off the IL? Or, would the team have kept him in the big leagues but limited his at-bats against lefties?
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And if they'd kept Anthony in the big leagues, might Ceddanne Rafaela have started bouncing between center field and second base while occasionally losing starts? Had that happened, would Rafaela have made the same two-way impact that he did this month?
'[The trade] has done some things and opened some things for some people who we know deserve it to have opportunities,' said Buehler.
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Star-level production by Rafaela and Story has likely more than offset the loss of Devers. But the lineup's improvement goes beyond just those two.
First, the team's collective approach has improved dramatically. While Devers had been a force with men in scoring position, the same couldn't be said of his teammates. The Sox had been less productive and more strikeout-prone with runners in scoring position through mid-June than they had been with the bases empty.
That's flipped. Since the trade – and particularly of late — the team has hit a remarkable .317/.366/.546 with runners in scoring position, and its strikeout rate has dropped from 22 percent overall to 19 percent with runners on second or third. There's been a concerted effort to put the ball in play.
Moreover, the anchoring of Devers in the two-hole behind fellow lefty Jarren Duran gave opposing managers a clear path to managing the Sox lineup in the late innings. Without Devers — and with Jarren Duran increasingly being moved to the bottom half of the order against lefthanded starters — the Sox have become comfortable employing platoons and pinch hitters to create headaches for opponents. The combinations of Abreu and Refsnyder as well as Romy Gonzalez, Marcelo Mayer, and Abraham Toro have created a succession of strong matchups.
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'Our lineup is a little bit more shape-shifty. There's different pieces and parts, and we're able to cover a couple different pitch shapes now. It's a different lineup,' said Refsnyder. 'It definitely doesn't feel like there's pockets of good matchups.'
'We've just been a very versatile team that's winning in a lot of different ways,' added Crochet.
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Might all of this have happened with Devers? Sure. Again: The Sox were amidst a five-game winning streak that signaled their best stretch of the season when they traded their DH.
That said, they've played well enough to at least make Breslow's suggestion of potential improvement post-trade plausible — with plenty of time remaining to seek a more definitive conclusion.
'The truth is, we won't know for a long time,' said CEO/president Sam Kennedy. 'That's the honest answer.'
Alex Speier can be reached at
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