Rafael Devers might not be the best player on the Red Sox — and that’s a good thing

Last week, while between tasty beverages at a local tavern, I found myself discussing the Rafael Devers vs. Alex Bregman third base situation with a stranger seated by the bar. He was, to put it mildly, staunchly against moving Devers to DH.

“You don’t move your best player off their position” he loudly and proudly proclaimed.

“Well, they’re going to” I thought to myself.

But because I’m less interesting and more nonconfrontational in public than I am in my online foxhole, the words that actually came out of my mouth were “well, it will be interesting to see what they do.”

Thanks to my underwhelming comment, the conversation tailed off from there in forgettable fashion, and I doubt the guy has thought about it since. But, as evidenced by the words written here, it’s stayed close to the forefront of my mind for several days. And, oddly, not for the initial reasons of reflection. Something else just keeps popping back up in my head.

This guy was so sure that Rafael Devers is the best player on the Sox, and clearly from what I’ve read online, he’s not alone. But the more I think about it, the more I doubt this assertion. Something much more complicated is happening here. In fact, I might go as far to say it’s never been less obvious who the best player on the Red Sox is than right now.

The roster is going thorough a metamorphosis, and that’s a good thing. The infield alone, where Devers plays … err played, transformed from inadequate and incomplete to a compelling combination of anarchy and abundance in a matter of months.

Sure, Devers was the best player not just in the infield, but on the entire Sox roster from the moment Xander Bogaerts joined Don Orsillo in San Diego at the end of 2022. But since that time, several other boom-or-bust guys have emerged, leaving the situation delightfully vague.

Let’s run through the candidates:

Rafael Devers might not be the best player on the Red Sox — and that’s a good thing

Devers is a fine place to start. He’s the team’s best hitter and the highest paid player in franchise history; and perhaps just as importantly, he’s also shown a penchant to put together quality at-bats in high leverage situations. This is enough to get him annual All-Star appearances and MVP votes, but because other elements of his game don’t add much value, he also has a limited ceiling. This is pretty well illustrated by the fact he’s finished in the top 20 in MVP voting five times, but never in the top ten.

In 2023, Devers led the team in baseball reference WAR (bWAR) for the first and only time in his career, but the number he posted was just 3.5. This was not only the lowest bWAR Devers has posted in any of the last four seasons, but it’s also the lowest bWAR posted by a Red Sox team leader in the metric in a non-Covid shortened season since 1927 (Danny MacFayden).

So at the end of the day, Devers is reliably productive. You can count on him to get on base and hit bombs all summer long. But if you have championship aspirations, he shouldn’t be the best player on your roster. And well, that’s kind of what’s happening.

Looking elsewhere on the roster, Jarren Duran emerged last year and more than doubled the bWAR Devers posted (8.7 to 3.7). But Duran is a tough player to gauge as his 2024 output sextupled the career WAR he had going into last year (1.4). As a result, equilibrium will remain a mystery for at least a few more months. But, in all likelihood, 2024 will be the best year Duran ever has from a statistical point of view.

At the same time tough, it’s worth noting how many opponents talk about the way Duran impacts the game and messes up what they’re trying to do. He’s a fascinating player — one who was the most productive guy on the Sox roster in 2024, but who may never be that again for an individual season. Either way, the trajectory of his career is on the line in 2025.

Then there’s Alex Bregman, who looks poised to take over at third base. In 2019, he put up a bWAR even higher than Duran’s 2024 on his way to finishing second in the MVP voting. But since that time he’s been more of the Devers mold where he’s consistently reliable and rarely otherworldly. He just arrives there with a more balanced set of tools instead of being able to do any one thing as well as Devers bats.

The question now becomes how productive will Bregman be in a Red Sox uniform? It’s a safe bet he’ll be good. But if he falls in love with the green monster and establishes a second career peak, he then enters the conversation as the best player on the roster right now.

Speaking of secondary career peaks, what if Trevor Story puts together a healthy season? He’s got so many ways to contribute to a winning team if he can just stay on the field for 150 games. His defense is elite, his baserunning is overlooked as he hasn’t been on the field enough the last two seasons to fully take advantage of the larger bases, and his bat only needs to return to solid form to be a real difference-maker when you combine that with everything else he brings.

Story, like Bregman had a monstrous pair of season in 2018 and 2019. The two combined for 13.9 WAR in 2018 and 15.8 WAR in 2019. Now they patrol the same side of the same infield. Somewhere in each of them lies something close to a career year, and if they each do it simultaneously in the same uniform, it will completely transform the nucleolus of this team.

Then we have Triston Casas, who Craig Breslow not so casually noted has the potential to post a 40-homer, 120-RBI season. Since the only two people to do that last year were Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, that would pretty easily put him in the conversation as the best player on the roster as well if he were somehow able to achieve it.

However, given that he only has 42 home runs and 109 RBI in his entire career so far, I’d bet against that kind of production.

But hey, while we’re on the subject of wild predictions, let’s recall what Jonathan Papelbon said about Ceddanne Rafaela earlier this winter.

On one hand, that sounds crazy, but I can at least see the path Papelbon took to get there. Rafaela is outstanding defensively, and he performs his magic in the middle of the diamond. So he, like Story, only needs a solid, not spectacular bat to get his overall production to skyrocket. Much of what holds him back is related to swing decisions, so it’s not impossible to see a world where this leap happens, particularly since he’s only entering his age-23 season.

In other words, I don’t think Papelbon is wrong about Rafaela’s ceiling. It’s just a matter of how far fetched it is that he reaches it.

Looking to the mound, no pitcher has led the Red Sox in bWAR since Josh Beckett in 2007. But in Garrett Crochet, Boston finally has somebody capable of doing that. Of course, I say capable because he’s never actually done it for a full season.

Crochet feels in line for the most obvious breakout season of all time. But for now he remains a guy who’s only thrown more than five innings in a game 12 times in his entire career. Like so many guys on this roster, the boom-or-bust potential is enormous.

And speaking of boom or bust guys, the Red Sox also have the purest flavor of that fruit in their three highly touted prospects. Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony, and Marcelo Mayer are all approaching critical, highly volatile steps in their baseball journey, where they could either flame out or be on the verge of starting an incredible career. It’s possible one of them is about to break out during the next few months and become the best player on this team for the better part of the rest of the decade and we just don’t know it yet.

All of this is to say the Red Sox are in a beautifully chaotic moment right now. They’re becoming something else from what they’ve been in recent years, and I can’t wait to find out exactly what that entails.

But part of this growth involves the guy who’s been their best player being displaced off his position because there are now better options defensively. And, of course, part of the growing pains will be how he handles that going forward.

It’s funny; I think most media members are being extremely cautious with their commentary on Devers right now because it’s an awkward situation (which is the exact opposite of journalism, but whatever). He’s clearly not thrilled with moving off third, and the way he responds to that will continue to be a lightning rod of controversy. But amidst all the storminess, something beautifully baseball is also brewing.

Devers may feel slighted, or even worry that his legacy is being threatened by recent events. But in reality, the exact opposite might be occurring, because I’d argue that Devers’ best quality as a baseball player isn’t just his bat, but his specific ability to rise to the occasion during big at bats.

It’s not just that he has power to all fields, can work a count, or that he’s smart enough to trap a pitcher into making a mistake. It’s that he’s able to do those things in key situations, like with runners in scoring position, in hostile environments like Yankee Stadium, or during October.

Now here’s where things get trippy. Rafael Devers is less likely to have as many of these key at-bats during his career if he’s the best player on the team, and this is because a team where Devers is the best player probably isn’t a very good one. For Devers to maximize his impact and legacy, he needs to play with better players than him. This will lift the squad in the standings and unlock dozens of at-bats during key moments in September and October where he can make the biggest difference.

Just as Devers can’t post a single season WAR score as high as some other guys on this roster due to his narrower skillset, other guys on the roster can’t strike the fear of God into an opponent the way Devers can from the batters box in a one run game with two on and two out in the postseason.

In short, the best way for Devers to build his legacy isn’t to pile up defensive innings at third base, it’s to pile up hits in October. For the first time in many years, the Red Sox have built a roster that should give him a pretty good opportunity to do that. Now he just needs to accept what comes along with that plan.