Just 25, Devers makes it look like child's play

In a season when Aaron Judge, who hit his 25th homer on Wednesday, might run away with the MVP race the way the Yankees are trying to run away from everybody in their division, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other candidates in the American League having terrific seasons. José Ramírez of the Guardians is one, for sure. You know Shohei Ohtani will always be in this conversation. Mike Trout will always find a way in when healthy.

But Rafael Devers of the Red Sox is already there. He hit a home run of his own on Wednesday night as the Red Sox stayed hot. It was his 16th. He is hitting .332. He is still just 25 years old.

“He’s one of the best hitters in the big leagues, but there’s a lot of guys having great seasons, Judge, Ramírez,” Alex Cora said on Wednesday after the Red Sox beat the A’s for a fifth straight time. “He shows up every day, we're happy that he’s hitting second for us on a daily basis and playing third base. The way he acted in Spring Training, we had a feeling it was going to be something like this, and [it’s] coming true.”

The Red Sox were 10-19 not long ago and in a freefall. They’ve gone 24-10 since, not that it’s done them much good with the Yankees, who have picked up ground on them over the same stretch. But suddenly, the Sox are just 1 1/2 games behind the Rays in the AL East, four games in the loss column behind the Blue Jays. They have pitched a lot better. Cora is in the process of assembling a bullpen, still very much a work in progress and occasionally looking like a house of cards.

But it starts with Devers in the No. 2 slot, then followed by J.D. Martinez and then Xander Bogaerts, the heart of the Red Sox order that is officially the most dangerous in all of baseball. Devers is doing what he’s doing. Martinez is hitting .345. Bogaerts is hitting .335. Still: It is the kid, Devers, whose at-bats are the ones you most want to watch. He’s the one for the Red Sox who sometimes looks like Papi Ortiz on training wheels.

And he is still a kid, not turning 26 until October. He’s a year older than Ronald Acuña Jr. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is still 23. So is Juan Soto. But outside of Boston, Devers is the bright young star of the game, really young, who still does not get discussed nearly enough. He is not eligible for free agency until after the 2023 season, but already, Red Sox fans are dreading the prospect that they might lose him the way they lost Mookie Betts if the team doesn’t extend him before that.

Bogaerts has an opt-out after this season in the six-year contract he signed three years ago. Bogaerts hit the big leagues in 2013 even if he hasn’t turned 30 yet. Devers came up in ’17. Now they are the greatest left side of an infield the Red Sox have ever had, and the best in the sport. They are both mashing, and so is J.D., and the Red Sox are part of baseball’s current heat index, along with the Braves and Yankees and Astros and Phillies.

The Red Sox have made themselves a team to watch. Their star to watch is Devers. People are still talking about the high-outside pitch from Paul Sewald he hit out of the park in Seattle last Sunday afternoon. And when we talk about outside, we mean on its way to Spokane. It came in the eighth inning of what was a 0-0 game at the time, and it insured the Sox would finish their West Coast trip at 8-2.

When Devers was interviewed on the field afterward, he really was a kid, eating an ice cream cone.

“I swing at everything and the pitch was a little closer than you think, and I was able to hit it out of the ballpark,” Devers said.

“There might be one or two hitters in this league, left-handed hitters, that can square that ball up, let alone hit it out of the ballpark,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said.

And here is what Martinez, as passionate a student of hitting as there is in the game, said:

“I mean, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen do that. It’s unbelievable. We talk about it all the time. He can cover so many pitches where a normal person can’t. It’s funny because you’ll see him chase pitches and you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s chasing,' and in my mind, I’m like, 'He’s hit that pitch out [before]. I’ve seen him do it a million times.' It’s impressive.”

Devers’ only hit on Wednesday night was a homer. But he knocked in two runs and scored three. He has those 16 homers for now -- a bunch in the last week -- 40 RBIs, a .374 on-base percentage, .617 slugging, .991 OPS. Nobody really expects him to win MVP if Judge stays healthy. But Devers has absolutely swung his way into the conversation. The kid crashing the party. He’s even two years younger than Ohtani. Sometimes you can still be a phenom, and this kind of show, five years after you first made it to The Show.