When the Red Sox lost a trio of highly respected veterans in free agency, many turned to Rafael Devers as someone who will need to step up and become a leader in Boston's clubhouse.
But as Alex Cora revealed Wednesday, having a commanding voice among his teammates won't be a new responsibility for the star third baseman.
To the average baseball fan, Devers might come off as a soft-spoken superstar who lets his play do the talking. But Cora, who's been around the 26-year-old since 2018, knows the real Devers.
"Raffy, that's the thing that you guys don’t know: He's been a leader of this team for a while here," Cora told reporters, per MassLive. "When he talks in that clubhouse, it's important to those guys. The way he goes about his business, it's important to those guys. Scouting reports, he talks about it. So yeah, now for everybody else this is the guy. But he's been one of our guys for a while. There's obviously other stuff that comes into play and we've been talking about it."
It's obviously great for the Red Sox that leadership appears to come naturally for Devers, who signed a monster contract extension with the organization this past offseason. But with the likes of Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi now out of the picture, Devers might need to take it to a different level.
