The Boston Red Sox slugger revealed to reporters that general manager Craig Breslow approached him about switching to first base in the wake of a season-ending injury to Triston Casas, coming on the heels of his much-ballyhooed switch to designated hitter in March.
That move came about due to the signing of Alex Bregman to a three-year, $120 million contract, adding Bregman’s defensively superior glove and a Fenway Park-perfect bat to the lineup. The alignment has been perfect: Bregman is producing like an MVP and Devers, after a historically bad start, has posted a .933 OPS and driven in 24 runs in his past 34 games.
But Devers swallowed his pride once and, at the relatively tender age of 28, accepted the shift to DH. He was far less receptive to grabbing a first baseman’s mitt to bail out the team’s lack of depth.
‘I’m a ballplayer, but at the same time, they can’t expect me to play every single position out there,” Devers told reporters via a team interpreter. “In spring training, they talked to me and basically told me to put away my glove, that I wasn’t going to play any other position but DH, so right now, I just feel like it’s not an appropriate decision by them to ask me to play another position.”
This tiff differs a bit from the spring training contretemps in which Breslow and manager Alex Cora presented a united front – and faced Devers’ backlash – while aiming to move him off third. Cora even noted that Devers’ $313.5 million contract extension was signed under a different front office regime.
But Devers seemed to air his grievances strictly at Breslow, who won a World Series championship as a member of Boston’s 2013 bullpen and is in his second year running baseball operations.
‘It was the GM that I spoke with. I’m not sure what he has with me,’ says Breslow. ‘He played ball and I would like to think he knows that changing positions like that isn’t easy.
‘Here in the clubhouse thankfully the relationship that I have with my teammates is great. I don’t understand some of the decisions that the GM makes. Next thing you know someone in the outfield gets hurt and they want me to play in the outfield. I think I know the kind of player I am. And yeah, that’s just where I stand.’
While Devers’ stance might appear to fall a bit shy of selfless, it’s instructive to consider the Red Sox spoke of him in the past tense as a position player just a few weeks ago, Cora inferring to listeners in a radio appearance that the DH move was permanent.
“Every DH used to be a position player until they were DHs,” Cora said on WEEI. “J.D. (Martinez) went through the same transition in 2018. He was an outfielder, he became a DH and you saw what happened. So we expect the same thing. The kid is ready to go. He’s going to hit second against lefties and righties.
‘And he’s going to DH. I think having Alex behind him (in the lineup) is going to benefit him. Honestly, I expect a great season from Raffy offensively.”
Devers isn’t the first employee to regard a quandary his bosses present him with and think, ‘Not my problem.’ His move to first would help open up DH for the rehabilitating Masataka Yoshida.
At the same time, Devers wasn’t the one responsible for roster construction. A year ago, the Red Sox summoned Dominic Smith to play first while Casas mended a rib injury for several months. Smith is now on a minor-league deal with the Yankees.
To which Devers says, scour the waiver wire, fellas.
‘And now, I think they should do their jobs essentially, and hit the market and look for another player,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure why they want me to be in-between the way they have been.”
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