Will Middlebrooks Sees This From Red Sox Star Rafael Devers During Homer Streak

Sox Talk with Will Middlebrooks is a recurring content series on NESN.com. Middlebrooks, a former Red Sox player and NESN analyst, will give his insight and opinion on pertinent Red Sox storylines throughout the season. You can read the latest stories from the series here.

Rafael Devers became the seventh player in Red Sox history to homer in five consecutive games on Sunday. Devers joined a list that includes Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx and even Bobby Dalbec.

But Devers is looking to do what Williams and Foxx couldn’t do and hit a home run in a sixth straight game Monday night when the Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field.

Devers is more than capable of making history given his powerful left-handed swing and Will Middlebrooks believes Devers standing alone with this Red Sox record would certainly be a worthwhile achievement.

“It’s a really impressive list and it’s a really hard thing to do, especially in today’s game with how good pitching is,” Middlebrooks told NESN.com. “I don’t think we’re talking about it too much. I think it would be a heckuva feat for him to accomplish that.”

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Devers got off to a slow start this season as he was plagued by a couple of nagging injuries, which caused him to miss five games in late April. Getting healthy helped him find his swing and he’s up to a .285 batting average with nine round-trippers — second on the team only to Tyler O’Neill — and 21 RBIs.

Devers started the homer streak last Wednesday with a solo blast off Rays reliever Phil Maton. The star third baseman kept on launching baseballs into the stands over the weekend against the St. Louis Cardinals by belting a homer in each game of the three-game set.

Middlebrooks got an up-close view of Devers with the former big leaguer at Busch Stadium while on the call for NESN and Roku’s first-ever MLB broadcast Sunday. One at-bat in particular from Devers stood out to Middlebrooks. It came Friday night as Devers showed a clear approach against Cardinals starter Kyle Gibson before clubbing a pitch 443 feet.

“He got a first-pitch fastball that was right down the middle and he didn’t even flinch at it. And I’m in the booth going, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Raffy take a fastball down the middle,’ because he’s never seen a pitch that he doesn’t think he can hit out of the ballpark,” Middlebrooks said. “It was a middle-middle fastball. And in my head and I think I even said it on the broadcast was he has to be looking curveball. Kyle Gibson throws a ton of off-speed. He’s probably done this to him in his past, and he’s got a tendency of going fastball and then slow curveball right after it trying to steal two strikes.

“Next pitch, slow curveball — it wasn’t a bad pitch, it was at the very bottom of the zone, like middle away down — and Raffy hit it out just right of center. I was like, ‘Ok, he was 100% just sitting on that curveball.'”

That at-bat from Devers was somewhat eye-opening to Middlebrooks. Not due to the sheer power the 27-year-old displayed, but how Devers carried out what he was trying to do once he stepped into the batter’s box.

“We haven’t really seen him do that much in his career,” Middlebrooks said. “It’s normally like, ‘See ball, hit ball, whatever pitch it is I’m going to adjust because I’m better than you and get the knock.’ But he’s been sitting on pitches. I’ve seen him sitting on off-speed. I think he’s learning, he’s getting older and more mature and he’s understanding that the game is changing and it’s going much more spin and way less fastball, especially to elite hitters like himself. He’s dialed in his approach.”