By Jon Couture
March 31, 2025 | 10:55 AM
COMMENTARY
Reader, I do not intimately know the details of your morning routine, but it’s a fair assumption someone will want to speak to you about Rafael Devers during it.
Anyone who is aware that the Red Sox began a hope-laden season in Texas over the weekend is likely similarly aware that it went very badly for Boston’s new designated hitter. Historically badly, in fact — 0 for 16 with 12 strikeouts. That’s the most Ks in the first four games of a season in MLB history, and the most in any series by a Red Sox player.
It’s also, somehow, not clear enough. Devers, batting second in a Jarren Duran-Devers-Alex Bregman-Triston Casas top four that Alex Cora kept for all four games against the Rangers, swung 46 times at Globe Life Park.
— Four balls in play: Three to first base, one to third.— Eleven foul balls.
— Thirty-one swings and misses (including a foul-tip strikeout).
The timing of that, combined with the superstar’s initial protestations about moving off third base and his largely invisible spring — Devers got 14 Grapefruit League at-bats, two fewer than Mark Kolozsvary — have made him the subject du jour. (The extreme open nature of his batting stance is ripe for analysis, and Sox manager Alex Cora mentioned the height of Devers’s hands before Sunday’s game.)
I will cede my time on Devers to, of all people, Kevin Millar, who may in fact believe brevity is nothing more than an IPA in the back of his beer fridge.
“We can say what we want. Bottom line is our job is to come in in the best shape of your life and have the best year of your life. Period,” Millar said during Sunday’s NESN broadcast. “Raffy would have to answer that question [if he’s doing that] looking in the mirror.”
An inning later, Millar noted to boothmate Lou Merloni that “a lot of Italian guys love to get manicures and pedicures.” I’ve not confirmed, but I believe that’s a quote from ‘The Merchant of Venice.’
So as we briefly look back at the first of 52 regular-season series, the recovery from which can begin Monday in Baltimore, let’s look beyond Devers. The world is a bleak, gray place, and we needn’t be deeply pessimistic about the local baseball team.
At least until, like, the middle of May.
Understanding that the Red Sox have been a below average defensive team by pretty much every major metric for five years running, that would be progress.
Bregman, who won his first Gold Glove at third base last season, made all of a dozen expected plays there, including a solid one around the bag on Sunday and one from deep on Friday. The offense lacked, but the defense didn’t after years of the hot corner being a roulette wheel from day to day.
The same went for the outfield. Jarren Duran made strong plays to both his left and his right, and Kristian Campbell’s superb 6-for-14 weekend at the plate was nearly supplemented with a downright theft on Adolis García on Saturday.
Alas, in baseball, the ground can cause a fumble.
It was all a reassuring step. A small first step in the right direction on a problem Cora’s teams haven’t been able to solve, but a notable one given years of failures.
It’s also the sort of thing that, should it hold, can help the Red Sox staff work more efficiently. Garrett Crochet needed 47 pitches to get through the first two innings of Thursday’s season opener, a big part of why he lasted just five.
“I dug myself a hole with the pitch count early,” Crochet told reporters. “Later in the game, just started trusting the defense and trusting everybody other than myself.”
A man who played in front of a White Sox team that lost 121 games last season can be excused for feeling like he needed to strike out the world. Change takes time.
Tanner Houck, whose dreadful spring numbers included a pointed inability to miss bats, was better in that regard — albeit with three walks and only two strikeouts. Walker Buehler threw just 39 percent of his pitches in the strike zone (according to Baseball Savant) in failing to get out of the fifth, tagged hard by García.
Richard Fitts built on his strong finish to 2024, attacking Rangers hitters and getting through six innings. And the bullpen kept the Sox in all four games, with Garrett Whitlock and Zack Kelly working strong two-inning bridge stints and the collective walking just one batter in allowing four hits in 12 innings.
Wilyer Abreu (7 for 10, 2 2B, 2 HR) had the best weekend of any major leaguer not named Aaron Judge, his two homers on Thursday all that kept things from being a sweep. (The Sox led in exactly two innings in four games — the 9th on Thursday and the sixth on Sunday, during which the Rangers needed four pitches to tie the game.)
You know who had the worst, but not far away were Casas (1 for 16, 7 Ks), Trevor Story (1 for 11), and Rafaela (1 for 12, swinging at a downright comic 77 percent of the pitches he saw).
Offense never feels like it will be the problem with the Red Sox, who haven’t been below league average in runs per game since 2014. For a weekend, though, that top four of Duran, Devers, Bregman, and Casas came up with a collective 40 men on base.
Exactly one scored, and it was when Devers drew a bases-loaded walk in the second inning on Saturday.
“We just didn’t pick guys up when we were on the bases, and it starts with me,” Bregman told reporters after the Sox went a collective 6 for 41 with runners in scoring position. “I have a lot of confidence that we’re going to turn it around here rather quickly.”
There’s no reason not to, with at least a few positive signs hiding in the long grass of a lost weekend.
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