Rafael Devers of the Boston Red Sox struck out not at all—not even one time—in Wednesday's victory over the Baltimore Orioles. In the fifth inning, with teammate Ceddanne Rafaela on first base, Devers timed up a 2–1 curveball from Zach Eflin and socked it down the right field line for a double! So his first hit of the campaign came in his team's sixth game: Big deal! The point is that he is now in the hit column. Even better: The O's sort of borked the relay, allowing Rafaela to come all the way around and score, giving Devers his second run batted in of the season (the other came on a bases-loaded walk). This was a nice moment: The relief was evident on our hero's face as he grinned from second base. Three cheers for Rafael Devers!
Devers collected another hit, a single, in the eighth inning, raising his batting average to a humble .087 on the season. Big things have small beginnings! Our man is on the move: With consecutive base knocks and zero strikeouts, Devers has removed himself from the list of poor flailing bozos. Devers's friends and relations can now chill. "I knew it was going to come, but I also received a lot of texts from people worrying about me," said Devers, after the win. "I was OK.”
Unfortunately, the same relief has been denied our poor suffering rookie Dylan Crews, of the Washington Nationals. Crews went hitless in Washington's series north of the border, and suffered his first benching of the season, when manage Davey Martinez gave his spot in right field Tuesday to journeyman Alex Call. Adding insult to injury, Call worked a walk and collected a pair of hits, including a double, and scored one of Washington's three runs in the loss. When Crews returned to the lineup Wednesday, he was ninth in the order and playing center field, with Call earning another start in right and batting seventh. Neither man made it on base. Crews is now 0-for-18 on the season, with one walk and 10 strikeouts. The one time he stood on first against Toronto, following a fielder's-choice grounder to shortstop, he was quickly erased in another fielder's choice, as if to target him for specific invalidation.
It wasn't all bad. Crews has two outfield assists already on the season, and on Wednesday he made a very sick catch on a swerving liner to rob Toronto's Bo Bichette of a base hit:
“It’s something that we definitely don’t want," Crews said Wednesday, of his team's shitty and disappointing 1–5 start, in which they have scored the fourth-fewest runs and produced the second-worst run differential in the National League. "We want to win every single game. But it’s only April. April 2. So we’ve got May, June, July, August, September. I think we can really flip this thing around here in the future.”
That's the spirit, young man. Crews today is the only player in baseball to have made 15 or more plate appearances without having collected at least one hit, per Stathead; he is also one of just three players to have made 15 or more plate appearances and amassed an on-base percentage below .100; the others, Willson Contreras and LaMonte Wade Jr., each have an extra-base hit and two RBI to show for their otherwise inadequate efforts. It should go without saying that Crews, at minus-83, is last among all qualified players in Baseball Reference's adjusted OPS+ metric, 31 points worse than the next least productive hitter.
The Nationals are off Thursday, thank God.
