Can the Yankees avoid the missteps of the Red Sox and Mariners?
By Cory Claus
Picking and Grinning
On the other side of the coin is 25-year old SS Bogaerts. He can rake with any shortstop, hitting .273/.343/.403 in 2017. But he also only ranked eighth in FP among qualifying players at the position in the AL; Didi Gregorius was third. Xander is a free agent in two years.
3B Rafael Devers is similar to Bogaerts, although at 21 the team has every reason to think he will improve. However, as it stands now, his FP of .906 makes him nineteenth among third basemen with at least 450 innings in 2017. But even that does not show his true lack of prowess.
Number eighteen on the list has a FP of .930, while the league leader is at .974 (Adrian Beltre). That means that the first eighteen players are separated by 44 percentage points, whereas Devers is 68 percentage points away from the top; that’s more than a fifty percent increase.
Devers bat, however, is already on its way to legendary status. But can the Sox really afford to have two average to below average defenders at short and third? You can bet the front office is thinking about that right now.
And in a sign of bad fortune, even when their players work out well, there is a downside.