Red Sox prospect Ceddanne Rafaela is bashing the baseball in Triple-A. Swinging less might punch his ticket to Boston.
"It's not about perfection. Let's just rein it in."
WORCESTER — For years, Ceddanne Rafaela’s path to the big leagues was paved by his glove.
A plus defender at shortstop and an elite center fielder, Rafaela’s highlight tape since joining the Red Sox organization has been inundated with clips of the blue-chip prospect snatching away extra-base hits with diving catches and plucking home-run balls from the warning track.
But since arriving in Triple-A Worcester in late June, the 22-year-old outfielder’s bat has further accelerated his pending arrival at Fenway Park.
Entering Wednesday’s matinee matchup against the Buffalo Bisons, Rafaela was batting .321 with a .672 slugging percentage and 1.042 OPS over 32 games. After slugging six home runs and driving in 37 runs over 60 games with Double-A Portland, the Curacao native has homered 11 times and accrued 30 RBIs in just 33 games with Worcester.
A surge in production at the plate against elevated competition isn’t an expected correlation found in most prospects down in the minor leagues.
Granted, Rafaela isn’t exactly like most prospects.
His elite defense once mapped Rafaela out as a big-leaguer whose role likely revolved around a super-utility designation.
But his aggressiveness at the plate and added pop paints the picture of a potential five-tool force capable of making an impact at the dish, in the field and on the basepaths (34 steals in 93 total games this season).
The final hurdle that Rafaela needs to clear before making the trek east to Boston?
For WooSox manager Chad Tracy, the goal is simple. Swing less.
“Swing decisions, for sure,” Tracy said of Rafaela’s primary focus at this stage of his development. “We knew he was a talented guy. We knew he was going to be able to hit, defend, all that . But the swing decision part was the next piece of the puzzle that needed to continue to improve.”
Rafaela, tabbed by MLB.com as Boston’s second-ranked prospect behind Marcelo Mayer (and No. 75 overall across all of baseball), is not one to shy away from trying to challenge pitchers with hacks at the plate.
It’s an aggressive approach that has yielded strong results so far down in Worcester. But it’s also an unsustainable approach, especially when a call to the big leagues arrives.
“The one thing we always want from him regardless of the numbers is controlling the strike zone,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of Rafaela over the weekend. “He’s very unique in what he does because he chases pitches, but he’s hitting.”
A free swinger at just about every stop in his minor-league career, Rafaela has struck out 33 times in 138 at-bats so far against Triple-A pitching this year. During his 60-game stretch with Portland earlier this summer, Rafaela fanned 55 times in 245 at-bats.
Rafaela’s current strikeout rate across Portland and Worcester is 21.1% this season, close to the 21.6% strikeout rate he featured between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland during the 2022 campaign.
Even though some of that high K rate can be absolved in some capacity thanks to his impressive production (and pop) at the plate, Rafaela’s low walk rate could be a recurring issue that limits his ability to string together consistent at-bats against MLB pitching.
Rafaela has worked a walk just seven times over 33 games with the WooSox, with his walk rate of 5.0% between Portland and Worcester no different from the 5.0% walk rate he put together in 2022.
Improving plate discipline has been a long-standing directive issued by the Red Sox development staff when it comes to Rafaela’s growth.
As Alex Speier of The Boston Globe noted earlier this year, the Red Sox even limited Rafaela to just one swing per at-bat during spring training in order to drill down the goal of not chasing pitches.
It’s a principle that’s easy to follow, but hard to consistently carry out when a 98-mile-per-hour fastball is sailing high in the zone toward you.
“Sometimes it can get to your head, too,” Rafaela said. “Like you want to be too perfect. But I think it’s not that, it’s just trying to be aggressive with the balls in the zone I think. That’s what they want me to do.”
For Tracy and the rest of his staff, reeling in Rafaela’s aggressiveness has no simple solution. Nor should it, as the WooSox skipper notes.
Even the best hitters in the pro game are prone to chasing offerings beyond the middle of the plate.
At various points this season, Rafael Devers has seemingly traded in his Louisville Slugger for a sand wedge — golfing pitches an inch or two from the dirt into the stands at Fenway Park.
For Tracy, the goal for Rafaela is to be more selective during in-game situations, rather than tentative or cautious. By doing so, those moments when he does try to hammer pitches will lead to more consistent contact (and results).
“Even the best hitters in the world are gonna chase sometimes,” Tracy explained. “They’re gonna chase up or down, they’re gonna chase out of the zone. The point for him is — let’s hone it back into an area that kind of hovers around what the average of what the rest of the league does. And if we do that, with your ability, your bat-to-ball skills, then all of a sudden we’re eliminating 15 percent of the balls that we’re swinging at that we don’t really have a chance to barrel.
We hone those in and then let’s see how many more balls now hit the barrel of your bat, which allows you to do serious damage. It’s not about perfection. Let’s just rein it in. And if we rein it in, then we know you’re swinging at more pitches that are typically driven more. And with your skill set? It’s going to be electric.”
Slowly but surely, Rafaela has seen the fruits of his efforts reflected in the box score.
Tracy correlates Rafaela’s recent power surge (five straight games with a home run from Aug. 1 to Aug. 5) to his improved discipline at the plate.
Cora believes that Rafaela’s best game so far with Worcester came on Aug. 2 against Syracuse, with the outfielder going 1-for-1 at the plate with a solo shot and four walks.
In total, Rafaela saw 19 total pitches in that game … and only swung once. He made his one hack at the plate count.
“That’s a great game for me,” Cora said. “So the more he walks, the more he controls the strike zone, the better he’s going to be.”
Tracy has not been surprised with Rafaela’s recent strides at the plate. As impressive as his stat lines have been since arriving in Triple-A, Rafaela has been cognizant of the hurdles he still needs to clear in order to be considered a potential MLB-ready talent.
“It’s difficult when you have a talented player that knows he’s talented, but thinks he’s got it all figured out,” Tracy said. “It’s quite different when you have somebody that talented that actually understands that he still has things he has to work on if he wants to be a really, really good big leaguer. So he gets it.”
With the final weeks of the baseball season now on the horizon, Rafaela is setting himself up for a potential promotion in the coming weeks — especially if he continues to keep his bat on his shoulders.
But regardless of whether or not he gets a call from Boston before the 2023 season wraps, Rafaela trying to stay in the present — one (checked) swing at a time.
“A week, month or next year, that’s all out of my control,” Rafaela said of his eventual call-up to Boston. “So I’m just keep playing my game hard and do my best every day.”
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