As a Chris Sale diagnosis looms, Rafael Devers offers plenty of comfort

COMMENTARY

Monday may prove the darkest day of recent Red Sox history, depending on what’s discovered and decided in the Pensacola suburbs. Chris Sale’s meeting with Dr. James Andrews could dismiss everyone’s worst fears, that the lefty tore an elbow ligament in his Tuesday start against the Indians, or it could determine that those 108 pitches will be the last Boston’s $145-million man will throw in a game until 2021.

It could change the direction of what was already going to be a critical winter, though starting pitching was always on the shopping list given Rick Porcello’s likely departure. It could be the final tip to change the person choosing that direction, given Dave Dombrowski’s Orioles-like 2018-19 offseason. It could absolutely change expectations for 2020, and have the Red Sox again feeling in the relative wilderness moments after a world championship.

Either way, Tuesday will return us to a different form of limbo. Both in the sense Alex Cora has no starting pitcher for the opener against Philadelphia and that, well, we really can’t formally sign the death certificate on the 2019 season until the Red Sox lose a couple more games, can we? Boston’s won five in a row after rescuing Sunday from the fire, and coming up next are two with the Phillies (at 64-60, as inconsistent and damaged as they are), three at sub-.500 San Diego, two at even-worse Colorado, and three against an Angels club we know is nothing special.

If you’re an unrelenting optimist, or even if you just play one for the press, you can convince yourself that’s a potentially fertile 10-game stretch.

“We do this for a month and a half,” Cora said after Friday’s win, Porcello offering hope that he’s finding something good, “we’re playing in October.”

Cleveland (74-51), Tampa (73-52) and Oakland (71-53) are all still safely clear of the 67-59 Red Sox, the Rays walking off Detroit on back-to-back days and the A’s taking 3 of 4 from pennant favorites Houston. Still, what was 8.5 games back with 41 to go is 6.5 with 36, thanks secondly to the maligned bullpen that kept the 5-0 sinkhole Nathan Eovaldi left from swallowing Sunday afternoon.

Thanks firstly, of course, to Rafael Devers. (Smartly not traded for Sale three years ago, says this observer!)

“Ten days ago or 15 days ago, we were talking about him chasing pitches and being in a slump,” said Cora, rightly noting his 22-year-old third baseman with the 1.125 OPS and 61 RBIs in his last 58 games opened August 2-for-22. “Now it seems like everything that’s in the zone, he’s hitting it hard. The quality of the at-bats is great.”

“He’s unbelievable,” said Mitch Moreland. “He hits everything. He just barrels everything.”

I probably got a bit carried away on Sunday afternoon, declaring Devers’s 2019 among the best seasons had by anyone in a Red Sox uniform not named Ted Williams. This 20-for-37, 8-doubles, 4-homers tear has Devers at a .976 OPS, good for seventh in the majors and second in the AL to Mike Trout’s greatest campaign yet — 41 homers and a 1.110 OPS, which isn’t bad for a guy only hitting .298.

The Red Sox have had 36 1.000-OPS seasons by batting title qualifiers. (Williams has 14 of them, including nine of the top 13.) They’ve had 40 position player seasons of at least 7.0 bWAR, with Mookie Betts’s MVP 2018 the second-best in team history at 10.9. First might be a mild surprise: Carl Yastrzemski’s Triple Crown 1967 (12.5), in which he also led the AL in runs and hits.

Devers won’t reach that company. He will, however, have 100 runs scored and 100 RBIs — he hit both those marks this weekend, joining Williams (in 1939 and 1940) as the only Red Sox to before turning 23.

The 46 doubles might become 60 the way he’s pulverizing everything — Devers’s 203 balls leaving the bat at better than 95 mph are 16 clear of Mookie Betts for the MLB lead — but let’s just grant him 50-something. The 27 home runs end up in the 30s, the 76 extra-base hits in the 90s, and the .332 batting average (third to DJ LeMahieu’s .339 and Michael Brantley’s .335) settles in the .320s.

That pick six — 100 runs, 100 RBIs, 50 doubles, 30 home runs, 90 extra-base hits, and a .320 average — pops up just 16 times in MLB history. A Red Sox has never done it. Exactly one guy who wasn’t yet 23 has: Alex Rodriguez in 1996.

Something of a cherrypick, of course. Babe Ruth hit all but the doubles requirement six times. Williams had 80 extra-base hits five times, but never 90; Jimmie Foxx (1938) and David Ortiz (2004) are the only Red Sox to ever get there. Some slight tweaks and dozens of great years flow in.

That’s also the point, though. This isn’t a year like any we’ve seen, built on overwhelming hard contact to all fields, against all stuff. And it doesn’t even account for Devers’s defensive evolution, his 18 errors belying in-season improvement (eight of those came in April) and the advanced metrics. Fangraphs has him slightly below average among third basemen versus last year’s full-on yikes.

Just as critical, it’s a year completely beyond our expectations. The Red Sox names on these lists? Williams, Ortiz, Ramirez, Vaughn, Boggs, Martinez, Betts? Most of them were established stars playing like stars.

Devers hit .240 last season and hit Chipotle harder. Per Baseball Savant, he has a higher average on balls out of the zone in 2019 (.256) than he had on balls in the zone in 2018 (.252). He was 109th in hard-hit contact last year, not runaway first. Though Cora predicted a 30-homer, 100-RBI season from Devers before 2018, there were prospects Bobby Dalbec and Michael Chavis in camp, looming as possibilities.

Devers had already gotten the message by then. His offseason work with a nutritionist showed by January. His focus on his defense, especially after a critical error in Chicago the first week of May, paid dividends. And his offense has scarcely wavered: .385 in the spring, .351 in a 40-hit May, .358 in a 9-homer July, and on toward the annals of Red Sox history. It’s rapidly growing from an all-time season for a 22-year-old to one without an age requirement.

In a season that has in so many ways failed to meet expectations, he has exceeded even the rosiest. This kind of success at a young age doesn’t always equate to a Hall of Fame career. But that’s a worry for far down the line.

Today’s already loaded in that regard. Devers offers a glimmer of present hope as we begin a day of waiting, and hoping for the best.