The Baseball Bodymind
The month began with me pleading with the Red Sox to just let Rafael Devers be Rafael Devers. At issue was not just the then-potential move from third baseman to designated hitter but an apparent desire on the part of the organization that he become a more front-facing and extroverted kind of leader on the team. The month ends with me wondering if the training staff understands what’s gone wrong.
After being essentially exempted from spring training games, the team did name Devers their DH and the results thus far are disappointing, as detailed by Alex Speier.
His performance in an 8-5 loss to the Orioles on Monday — five plate appearances in which he failed to put a ball in play, going 0 for 3 with three strikeouts and two walks — added to a line that suggests something is deeply amiss. Devers is 0 for 19 with 15 strikeouts to start 2025, the most strikeouts in big league history through the first five contests of a season.
Most of the broadcast chatter during games over the past five days as the Red Sox quickly dropped to .200 baseball and the basement of the division has been about Devers’ stance and his timing. None of the chatter, as near as I can tell, has been about what I think likely is the actual issue.
Devers is used to spending nearly the entire game in his body, but now—because he doesn’t take the field—he’s spending nearly the entire game in his head. There doesn’t seem to be any discussion on whether or not the training staff has been coming up with ways to help him make this adjustment, despite the fact that any player would tell you that getting stuck in your head can be death in baseball.
Prior to the switch to designated hitter, Devers’ experience of baseball was physical for at least half of every inning, plus however often in the other half-innings he came up to the plate. Now, his experience of baseball is physical, on average, only every couple of innings.
That’s a massive change.
Tweaks to a player’s stance and questions of their timing are what you focus on as a manager, a trainer, or a front office when you’re stuck in analytics mode. How to transition a player from a game where they’re almost always in their body to one where there’s too much time to be in their head is what you focus on when your mode is to look at a player as a person first.
(Not for nothing but this also is the root of the failure when someone or something made Devers stop self-regulating at the plate: a lack of supporting the tools a person needs to be the best player they can be.)
It’s true, as noted by Jen McCaffrey, that Devers apparently dismisses the idea that his struggles stem from this transition to designated hitter, but this is one of those times when I don’t put much stock in what the player himself is saying. There’s simply no way this switch from a body-maximized game to a body-minimized game isn’t an obstacle.
It’s on the Red Sox training staff to work with Devers as a person, not just as a player, and find the tools he needs to stay in his body as much as possible while sitting on the bench stuck in his head, thinking about how to make things right.
Addenda
- There’s a glimpse and glimmer of potential understanding here by Devers: “Maybe I’m thinking too much at the plate.” As evident above, I think it’s not just about at the plate.