Those who follow the Red Sox have gotten quite familiar with Rafael Devers.
He has been around for quite awhile, after all, making his Major League Baseball debut in 2017 and serving as Boston’s most talented bat since. He’s also going to be sticking around, as he agreed to terms on a 10-year contract extension this past offseason.
Knowing all of that, you would expect that Devers would have a hard time leaving his manager stunned at this point. That’s not the case, however.
“I have no idea how he can do that,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters citing Devers’ opposite-field grand slam, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “I was talking to (Raimel) Tapia, how he can reach a pitch that is thrown away and he stays inside and hits barrel and drives it that way(, I don’t know). Just to be able to do that is impressive.
The fly-ball home run put the Red Sox up 6-0 in the second inning, allowing them to cycle through the order more than five times by the end of the afternoon.
The 26-year-old would go on to finish the afternoon 2-for-4 with two homers and five total RBIs.
Here are some more notes from Red Sox-Tigers on Saturday:
— Adam Duvall is having the greatest start in Boston that we’ve ever seen. The 34-year-old now has the most home runs (four), RBIs (14) and extra-base hits (nine) of any player in the first seven games of their Red Sox career, per team statistician J.P. Long.
He spoke about his scorching start postgame.
“I don’t really think of myself as a patient person,” Duvall admitted, as seen on NESN. “But I’ve been able to focus in on where I’m looking and what I’m looking for. To be able to lay off anything else, it’s cool to see that.”
— Devers (two), Duvall and Tapia all went deep against the Tigers. Boston is now up to 14 home runs in eight games this season. It had 12 in all of April (22 games) last season, per NESN’s Tom Caron.
— Tanner Houck moved to 2-0 through two starts this season, allowing just two runs on three hits through five innings pitched. Cora spoke about his early success postgame.
“(He) was good. Solid,” Cora said. “It was what we needed. This is a guy that had back surgery last year, and he was off in spring training, but little-by-little he’s finding his groove.”
— Rob Refsnyder got the start in left field and batted lead off for the Red Sox on Saturday, as they were opposed by a left-handed pitcher. You can expect to see a lot of Refsnyder in the coming weeks, as Boston is in line to face eight lefties over their next nine games.
— The Red Sox will return to Comerica Park to wrap up the three-game set Sunday. First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. ET and you can watch it on NESN after an hour of pregame coverage.
