They all saw it coming.
When Rafael Devers stepped to the plate, he was going to get fastballs. It was a dynamic Red Sox manager Alex Cora even predicted prior to what would be his team's 5-1 loss to the Astros in Houston.
Sure enough ...
In the first game of the Houston series, every single one of the 15 pitches Devers saw were fastballs. Tuesday night it was 20 pitches, 20 fastballs. The results were predictably ugly - 0-for-7, five strikeouts.
Devers has now had 107 at-bats end with fastballs, culminating in just 17 hits (.159 batting average) and 53 strikeouts. It has become a problem, with the last two games serving as the most obvious slap-in-the-face.
For a player who hit .308 against fastballs in 2019 -- offering moments like the home run on Aroldis Chapman's 104 mph fastball along the way -- it is an out-of-nowhere issue.
"It seems like he’s gotten away from who he is," Cora said after the Red Sox' second straight loss to Houston. "It seems like he knows a fastball is coming and he’s getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes we forget that he’s still young and he’s still learning at this level, and stuff like this is going to happen. One thing is for sure, I told somebody in the seventh inning, ‘There was some progress – he made contact after one of them.’ He’s gonna keep working with Timmy and Pete. That’s soething that we’ve been working actually the last few days at home. We saw the trend. The fact that he hits mistake pitches out of the ballpark is great, but at the same time, obviously, this is a guy, he can catch up with the fastball. He can get on top of it and shoot it the other way. It’s just a matter of him slowing it down. I think he’s speeding up now. He knows it’s coming. He had some good takes on some of them, but then he got big. We’ve got to make sure he’s on time and get on top of it. A good line drive to left field is probably what we’re looking for right now. If he does that, he’s going to be fine."
While Devers' struggles wasn't the be-all, end-all when it came to putting the Red Sox two games in back of the first-place Rays, it was certainly a big part of perhaps the team's most important problem.
As we have come to understand with this group, the jumping off point for success will come from the middle-of-the-order, of which Devers is a key element.
But J.D. Martinez has also found himself hitless in seven at-bats thus far in Houston this week, while Xander Bogaerts hasn't had a hit since May 25.
"They’re human," said Cora of the meat of the order. "That’s part of it, right? It’s gonna be part of 162 games. That’s why we always talk about the other guys have to step up. they’re not going to carry the offense for 162 games. Stuff like this, two guys that have good pitches and had a good gameplan. We know that they’re pretty good at what they do pitching-wise. I think it’s not the same names, but it’s kind of like the same concept. It seems like they have these guys that, their fastballs are a little bit different. We’re going to run into this probably this month with everybody that we face. So we’ve got to make adjustments. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it before. We’ve just got to keep working with them, and the other guys have to step up."
The good news is that the Big 3 are all sitting with OPS north of .900, with Devers clocking in at .927. But consider this a warning shot, one that has left the Red Sox trying to fix the most vital piece of their puzzle.