There is no more overlooked star in baseball at any position, but particularly at shortstop, than Xander Bogaerts.

We talk a lot about Fernando Tatis, Jr., Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, Trevor Story, Javier Báez and Tim Anderson with good reason. But just going by the numbers, in a numbers game, there is no better or more consistent shortstop in baseball over the past several years than Bogaerts of the Red Sox -- who made his big-league debut in 2013, has already been on two World Series championship teams in Boston and is still just 28.

Bogaerts came into the week with no home runs, but went into Saturday’s game between the Sox and Mariners with three -- and a pretty nifty slash line of .378/.418/.595 (1.012 OPS). His latest home run, off Seattle’s Yusei Kikuchi, came in the first inning on Friday night’s 6-5 Boston win.

This is how Red Sox manager Alex Cora described what he saw from his shortstop on that home run:

“It [seemed] more like [an] old-school swing. Chop wood and get on top of the ball. But he’s such a strong guy he can get to whatever. There [are] no limits [to] what he can get to.”

Mookie Betts is in Los Angeles now. Rafael Devers, who plays third base next to Bogaerts in the Red Sox infield, is an emerging star. J.D. Martinez -- who was as valuable a player as there was in the American League three years ago when the Red Sox won their last World Series -- has his stroke back and entered the weekend leading Major League Baseball in RBIs. But it is Bogaerts who bats cleanup for Cora. It is Bogaerts who is the Red Sox brightest star after Mookie was sent to the Dodgers before the 2020 season.

It is Bogaerts who is better than you think, unless you watch him day after day and year after year the way Red Sox fans do. Even last season, when it was as if the roof caved in on the Red Sox, Bogaerts still managed to hit 11 home runs in 56 games and have another .300 season, hitting .300 on the nose.

Bogaerts came up with the Red Sox as they were making their World Series run in 2013 and didn’t turn 21 until Oct. 1 that year. In that postseason, the Red Sox mostly played the kid at third because Stephen Drew was the regular shortstop that year. He got three hits in six at-bats in the ALDS the Sox played against the Tigers. Bogaerts got five more hits in the World Series against the Cardinals, knocking in a couple of runs and scoring a couple.

Suddenly, it is now his eighth full season in the big leagues. Bogaerts has a lifetime batting average of .291, which sure seems as if it will go up by the time the 2021 season is over. He has hit .300 three times, with his best batting average being .320 in '15. He hit 33 homers and knocked in 117 runs in '19.

And his numbers simply get better when you measure them -- and him -- against the other young star shortstops in baseball. Lindor, who made his debut in 2015, has hit 133 home runs as a shortstop since then (139 overall). Story, who came up the year after Lindor, has hit the same 133 homers (135 overall). Bogaerts, whose first full season was 2014, has hit 116 of his 121 career homers while playing shortstop.

Since 2014, according to the Elias Sports Bureau (they know everything), Bogaerts has 521 RBIs while playing shortstop (537 overall during that span). Among shortstops since that season, Brandon Crawford is next at 462, followed by Didi Gregorius at 432. Across that same time period, Bogaerts has hit .296. Seager, who came along later and was the MVP of both the National League Championship Series and the World Series last season, is at .295. Seager is younger than Bogaerts, but not by as much as you think, as he will turn 27 on Tuesday. Lindor will turn 28 in November -- and he’s only a year younger than Bogaerts. Somehow, though, perhaps because he’s been around so long, Bogaerts’ name doesn’t come up nearly often enough when we talk about the game’s most exciting young stars.

And he is more than just someone who can hit -- and hit for power. Bogaerts made a sweet diving stop in the first inning of Friday night’s game to start a big double play for his team on a ball to his left.

“That was nice,” Bogaerts said later. “That was better than a homer. I know [Martín Pérez's] pitch count was running up. He was battling throughout that first inning. I saw he was going to throw a fastball away, so I kind of cheated up the middle, and [the Mariners' Evan White] hit it perfectly where I was.”

This is who he is. This is who he has been for a long time for the Red Sox, since he came up as the hot kid at age 20 in 2013 to help the Red Sox win the unlikeliest of the four World Series they have won in this century. He has now played more games for the Red Sox at shortstop than Nomar Garciaparra did.

Mookie left. Red Sox fans hope Bogaerts never does. Maybe the rest of the baseball world overlooks him far too often, but Sox fans never do.