By all accounts, Rafael Devers has started his tenure with the San Francisco Giants as a team player.
After his trade by the Boston Red Sox on Sunday, Devers said he will play whatever position team brass asks him to play.
That’s a clear departure from his final months in Boston, when he initially refused moving from third base to designated hitter, then passed on the request to try first base after Triston Casas’ season-ending knee injury.
And there’s a simple reason why Devers is all-in on the Giants: Buster Posey. The former big-league catcher is San Francisco’s president of baseball operations and one of the architects of the blockbuster five-player deal with the Red Sox.
“I would be shocked if he does anything other than ‘I’ll take ground balls wherever you want me to take them’ because Buster Posey is going to sit down in front of him,” ESPN MLB analyst Tim Kurkjian said Wednesday on the “Baseball Tonight” podcast.
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“Future Hall of Famer, three-time world champion, the best position player on three world championship teams, MVP, batting champ, and a guy who speaks softly, he doesn’t speak very often, but if that guy sits down and looks you in the eye and says, ‘Look, we have a chance to win here and we need you to be great, and we need you to do what we tell you to do,’ I think Rafael Devers will do whatever he is asked to do,” Kurkjian said.
Devers made his Giants debut Tuesday as the DH going 2-for-5 with an RBI double and two strikeouts in San Francisco’s 3-2 loss to the Guardians. He returned as the designated hitter Wednesday, going 0-for-3 with one strikeout in the Giants’ 4-2 loss to Cleveland.
The Giants conclude their three-game series with the Guardians on Thursday before welcoming the Red Sox to Oracle Park for a three-game set over the weekend.
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