Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers wins AL Player of the Week amid drama

Devers is now hitting .280 on the season with seven long balls and 31 RBIs. He’s been the Red Sox DH for the entire campaign. He smacked a long homer on Sunday against the Kansas City Royals that traveled nearly 450 feet.

The Dominican hasn’t exactly been happy with Boston, though, after he lost third base to Alex Bregman in the offseason.

Rafael Devers reportedly met with owner John Henry on Friday as he flew to KC to discuss the first base move, but he doesn’t seem interested in helping. Devers appears to be content with focusing strictly on his bat. There’s definitely two sides to this argument.

On one hand, the Red Sox paid Devers $313.5 million to hit. That’s the truth of it. He isn’t in the lineup for his defense, so why should Devers learn how to play a new position? Plus, it’s not his fault Boston didn’t pinpoint a reliable backup for Casas at first after he also missed four months last season. Casas is injury-prone and that’s become very clear.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt that Devers wants to win. Sometimes that means helping out your ball club and doing things you may not be familiar with — like playing first base. The Red Sox have looked promising so far, and if Devers is keen on helping the club stay competitive, he may need to step into the unknown. Abraham Toro and Romy Gonzalez ain’t cutting it.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Rafael Devers saga. For now, he’ll just focus on raking at the dish.