Devers back?

I don't know the "Texas Back?" meme to make a follow up reference, but just be aware that that's what I'm going for

The results in Toronto weren’t great for Rafael Devers. In the 3-game series, he went 3-for-12 with no walks and one double, which comes out to a .583 OPS. That was worse than his first 25 games with the Giants, in which he hit .202/.330/.326, which were already not good enough. If you were just scouting the stat line, he was continuing his poor performance since coming over from Boston.

But watching his at-bats in Toronto, he looked better. The ball was jumping off his bat more. He was doing a good job of working counts. At the plate, he had the presence of a perpetual All-Star and one of the best hitters in the game, instead of the presence of a normal San Francisco Giant. He looked different. He wasn’t getting the results yet, but it seemed like he should have been.

And then, in Atlanta, he started getting those results.

I don’t want to overstate things. The Braves, despite some impressive talent, are a bad team this year, and a lot of good hitters can do good things against bad teams. Devers homered against Spencer Strider yesterday, and while Strider is a good pitcher this year, but he is not nearly as good as the 2023 Spencer Strider, who led the league in strikeouts and finished fourth in Cy Young balloting. You could certainly argue that one good series is just one good series, and doesn’t carry much meaning beyond that.

Except the Giants have been waiting since mid-June for the real Rafael Devers to show up, and he just did. He didn’t show up against the Guardians or Diamondbacks. He skipped the Marlins, and the less said about his performance against the White Sox (The White Sox! For God’s sake), the better. So even if you assume the competition was weak, Devers was still doing something he hadn’t done yet in a Giants uniform.

Devers starting to hit was the first of my keys to the second half, and for good reason: all of the reasons that I mentioned there. The main point, though, was that the team is desperate for an impact hitter, and not many of them come along, and they managed to trade for one, and so now they need their impact hitter to hit like an impact hitter.

Before the Break, it was easy to dismiss Devers’s poor production as being injury-related, or at least partially due to the change in scenery. And while I don’t think anyone had fully lost patience with him yet, in Fanworld, things were getting a little testy. We were PROMISED that SOON, the team would GET TO THE FIREWORKS FACTORY. But there they all went, driving along, NEVER GETTING TO THE FIREWORKS FACTORY. Was it all a false promise? Was there even a fireworks factory at all?

So seeing a series in which Devers hit .500/.533/1.000 is both a huge relief and just a first step. Because yes, it’s great that he drove the ball, looked good at the plate, and played a little first base along the way. But we need to see it tomorrow too, and the next day, and the next day. Anyone can have a good or great series — shout out to Mike Benjamin! — but for Devers to fulfill the promise that led the Giants to trade Kyle Harrison and James Tibbs III for him, among others, he’s going to have to do it consistently.

There are reasons to think that this could be the turnaround. The Giants’ plan was for Devers to rest his balky back over the All-Star Break in the hopes that it would feel better when the team resumed play. They could have been right! Maybe he legitimately just needed a few days off to rest and get back to whatever passes for normal in Baseball World. I know that this seems unlikely, but it is entirely possible that the Giants medical staff had a more informed opinion on the health of a Giants player than a bunch of fans who have never met him.

There’s also the defense question. Devers had been a DH all year, and without getting into the whole Red Sox Love To Trash Their Star Players While They’re Still There And Then Again After They Leave thing, this had caused some friction in Boston. When he got to San Francisco, he and the team agreed that he would take some time to learn first base, and without getting into the whole Will Clark Feuding With Dave Flemming’s Brother thing, he eventually made enough progress that he debuted at first base on Tuesday.

Devers has said that he prefers playing defense to just being a DH. “It keeps me active during the game. I don’t have to think too much about my hitting,” he said on Tuesday. “Sometimes I feel very uncomfortable when I think too much about my hitting.” He has only played one game at first so far, but it’s possible that the mental side of finally debuting and relieving that uncertainty helped him to get back to normal.

There are also reasons to think that it’s not the turnaround. Mainly, it’s just three games. That’s not that many games. Even if you include the three in Toronto, where he looked good but didn’t get results, that’s just six games. In his first six games last year in which he batted, Luis Matos hit .385/.385/.731. Over the rest of the season, he hit .177/.208/.266. Hot streaks happen, and they don’t necessarily lead to success for the rest of the year.

But this is still Rafael Devers. The Giants traded for him because he has proven himself to be a legitimately great hitter. It has happened where that kind of guy falls off the map overnight — shout out to Andruw Jones! — but that’s pretty unlikely. Hopefully, his first month was an aberration due to injury/emotional distress from the city of Boston. The Giants paid a big price for Devers and they need him to be himself. Once that happens, it will be a big weight off everyone’s shoulders.