2025 stats w/SFG: 90 G, 395 PA, .236/.347/.460, .224 ISO, 29 K%, 14 BB%, 126 wRC+, 1.3 fWAR
Phase 1 of the 9-phase master plan was a dud.
Rafael Devers was not the quick download for a desperately needed offensive upgrade. At times, that rotating rainbow wait cursor seemed to spin endlessly next to his name on the line-up card. He dealt with some lower-back discomfort. A groin injury nagged him. He needed to acclimate to his new setting: a new position, a new team, a new coaching staff, a new league, a new coast; while also managing the attention and expectations a mid-season blockbuster trade brought his way.
All frustratingly human reasons why the trade for Devers — who is a human — didn’t spur the 2025 San Francisco Giants on to greater heights. He needed time, and the Giants didn’t really have that. The team’s shortcomings started to show through April’s gilded veil. Their record didn’t really belong to them. The pitching depth wasn’t as flawless or as deep as they thought. By mid-June they were adrift, taking on water, and Devers, dropped onto their aimless vessel, had an oar — but an outboard motor was needed.
Devers didn’t miss a single game as the Giants went 40 – 50 to end the season. A damning stat that ostensibly supports the Devers-as-a-clubhouse-cancer narrative (just look what the Sox did with him gone!). But good players have played on bad teams for all of baseball history. Looking at the individual performances of each offensive contributor over those final 90 games, it’s pretty clear Devers was not dead weight. In fact, he and Adames were the only above-average performers on the team. Devers’s 126 wRC+ was the second highest on the club behind Willy Adames’s 133. The next closest to that number was Matt Chapman’s 104. He collected more extra basehits (35: 20 HR, 15 2B), walked more, and hit the ball harder than any other batter in the line-up.
Devers was a formidable presence for the Giants at the top of the line-up, but it’s also true that what produced was disappointing. Not because it was an objectively poor performance, it just wasn’t up to his own ridiculously high standards.
Since 2021, year after year, Devers has posted a .270+ / .350+/ .500+ slash line at the plate. Over the first half of the 2025 season, he maintained that average and slugging as his on-base percentage swelled to over .400 thanks to a 17% walk rate made possible by a more disciplined plate approach. He had a top-20 wRC+ at 146 over 73 games and 334 PA. A number aided by a bizarre surge against same-side arms.
Southpaws have never been a silver bullet for Devers. His career .739 OPS against them is mark a good chunk of players would trade for as their back-of-the-card number, but considering his career OPS against righties is .910, sending out a left-hander to face him has historically been the better option. But out of nowhere, that narrative changed in the early months of this season. He posted a .907 OPS against right-handers in 214 PA, and in 120 PA against lefties, he nearly matched that with a .901 OPS.
It was an exciting spike in production that made a ferocious hitter all the more terrifying to face. How cool that he was going to bring all that ferocity and terror to our team! Sike! That “spike” was exactly what it was: a precipitous rise followed by a precipitous fall. As a Giant, Devers’s production against left-handed pitching rolled off a cliff. He logged 120 PA against them — just as he had with Boston — but got thrashed: .185/.248/.324. That .582 OPS was unchartered territory for him. Never in his career had he been so ineffectual with a bat in his hand. So what happened? Was he just being human again? Did he miss flipping lefty releases the other way, peppering hits off the Green Monster? Does it have something to do with his excessively open stance, something he pushed open even wider in the past couple of years? Or is it the old adage that hitting is contagious, and there actually was a Southpaw Syndrome going around the Giants’ clubhouse in 2025; a miasma, thick and malodorous, infecting any hitter who breathed it in.
I don’t have an explanation, but I feel fairly confident that Devers does. Or, I feel fairly confident that Devers isn’t worried about those kinds of fluctuations. You average out the high and low, and on the year, you get a pretty level .740 OPS. Sounds about right. The Giants just got the bad bunch in 2025. That’s okay because next year, they don’t have to share him. The best part of the Devers deal wasn’t that the Giants had him for the 2025 season, it’s that they had him for the one after that…and the one after that…and the one after that…
That’s a lot of years and a lot of dollars promised to Rafael Devers. I get how that can be intimidating, especially considering his defensive strictures, as well as how limitations seem rather cruelly to compound with each passing year. (Shaking fist at the heavens: “Time!”) We’ll watch him when he’s old and grey, swinging a cane up at the plate — but that’s a future worry. Now is the present, and it’s a gift. Devers turned 29 last week. He learned a new position on the fly and seemed to have some fun doing it. He played in 163 games over a 162 game season. He’s in his prime, and he’s actually a hitter. Like a hitter hitter hitter. The Giants haven’t had one of those in years!
