Will Rafael Devers heat up with the weather?

This story was excerpted from Ian Browne’s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

June starts today, which means the weather is about to become consistently warm in Boston.

Will Rafael Devers follow suit?

One of the underplayed stories so far for the 28-27 Red Sox is that their most dangerous hitter hasn’t had anything close to one of the hot streaks he has made commonplace during his career.

Perhaps you can take this as a good sign from Wednesday night’s 5-4 loss to the Reds: Devers finally walked!

It had been a while. The free-swinging third baseman didn’t draw a walk in 64 consecutive plate appearances until finally breaking the pattern with an impressive 10-pitch walk in the bottom of the seventh.

The free pass came just a day after Red Sox manager Alex Cora said somewhat sarcastically, “Raffy hasn’t walked in months.”

Though Devers will probably never be an on-base machine, he needs to keep some selectivity with his approach to keep pitchers honest.

“I need to obviously control the strike zone,” Devers said. “I'm not the kind of hitter who’s going to see a lot of pitches. I’m very aggressive, that’s the kind of baseball player that I am. But I know that I need to take some walks when I need to and I’m working on it.”

In the at-bat after the walk, Devers came up in the bottom of the ninth and worked the count full again before crushing one to deep center. For a moment, it looked like it could be a game-tying homer, or perhaps a double. But it was caught at the wall by Reds center fielder Nick Senzel to end the game.

Through his first 207 at-bats of the season, Devers has a slash line of .246/.288/.498 with 13 homers and 37 RBIs.

“The past few weeks haven’t been very consistent but I need to make adjustments and that's what I've been trying to do,” Devers said.

If Devers can catch fire, it will likely have a ripple effect on the rest of a lineup, which has been a little chilly of late.

“When you walk, good things are going to happen,” Cora said. “Sometimes you get caught up trying to get out of slumps swinging the bat and swinging more. That’s not the case. It should be the other way around. Narrow your focus in an area and make sure you get your pitches and if they’re not there, just take your base."