Four Boston Red Sox players made ESPN top 100 ranking for 2020
By Drew Athans
Rafael Devers
The fourth and final Red Sox player on the list, and the highest ranked, is young Rafael Devers. The third basemen didn’t make the 2019 list but after the breakout year he had last season, there was no way he wasn’t making it this year. Interestingly, he debuted at number twenty-seven, one spot higher than his fellow left-side infielder Xander Bogaerts.
Devers had a really good 2018 season in helping the Red Sox win the World Series, but there still questions about how good his bat could be and how long the team could weather his poor defense. He answered all of those questions and then some with a phenomenal season in 2019 which instantly put him in the conversation of young and exciting new superstars in the league.
2018: .240 BA, 21 HR, 66 RBI, 59 R, .298 OBP, .731 OPS (121 games)
2019: .311 BA, 32 HR, 115 RBI, 129 R, .361 OBP, .916 OPS (156 games)
Look at those numbers jump from 2018 to 2019! Devers also clubbed a league-leading 54 doubles last season while greatly improving his defense at third.
The Red Sox are fully expecting him to continue on this path and to produce more gaudy numbers in 2020 and beyond. While you can quibble whether he should have been ranked ahead of Bogaerts or not, there’s no denying that Devers belongs on this list now.