Written by Scott Lauber at ESPN.com
Two weeks ago, the Boston Red Sox had no urge to call up top prospect Rafael Devers. In fact, the last thing they wanted, according to president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, was to thrust a 20-year-old third baseman into the middle of a pennant race.
But there was Dombrowski, standing in manager John Farrell’s office after Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Angels and announcing that Devers will join the team Monday in Seattle.
Talk about an about-face.
“Our biggest concern with him has been that if we brought him up and he struggles, like a lot of guys do, how would he handle it? And our people feel that he would handle it well at this point,” Dombrowski said. “They said that he’s ready to tackle that next step.”
Devers is expected to start Tuesday but will be available off the bench for Monday’s game.
Within the past two weeks, Devers has been promoted to Triple-A, where he notched three more hits Sunday and was 14-for-35 (.400) in nine games overall. Dombrowski heard only raves from assistant general manager Eddie Romero, farm director Ben Crockett, Triple-A manager Kevin Boles and others within the organization. He even dispatched scout Brad Sloane to Portland this weekend with specific instructions to evaluate Devers.
“The consensus is that he’s a baseball player, loves to play the game,” Dombrowski said. “He’s ready to handle it.”
But this was about more than Devers, of course.
For weeks, the Red Sox have scoped out the trade market for third basemen. Todd Frazier appeared to be a perfect short-term fix, but last Wednesday, the Chicago White Sox packaged him with relievers David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle to the New York Yankees in a deal that got too big for the Sox.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Royals are too close to wild-card contention to trade Mike Moustakas. The other options — Eduardo Nunez, David Freese, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jed Lowrie, Yunel Escobar — weren’t especially appealing.
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