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Photo: Paul Sancya / AP
Rafael Devers should be the American League’s starter at 3rd base in the All-Star Game. Why? He’s the best 3rd baseman in the MLB. Back in 2017, when the baby-faced corner infielder, nicknamed Carita, hit a home run against a 102 mph Aroldis Chapman fastball, fans began to take notice of his hitting ability. In 2021 he had the best year of his career, with a .279 average, 38 homers, 113 RBI, and a Silver Slugger. 2022 is no different. But fans are voting for Cleveland's Jose Ramirez to start the ASG in Hollywood this year for some reason. This needs to stop. Raffy is on another level compared to him.
Let me explain: Devers leads the league in hits, with 104, and has more homers than Jose, with 17 compared to 16. Carita has an astounding .327 average compared to just .289 for Ramirez. Devers has the better on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, along with the better on-base plus slugging, and more total bases. Devers is also a better base runner according to metrics, but hey, who really pays attention to that stuff. I’m kidding, many people still care about baserunning.
Photo: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images
Now for the stuff that we actually care about… Average Exit Velo, Max Exit Velo, HardHit%, and Barrel%... For these categories (numbers listed in order from L-R), Raffy is in the 97th, 93rd, 96th, and 79th percentiles, compared to Jose, at just 26th, 81st, 34th, and 37th. That is a massive difference and it proves that Devers is by far a better pure hitter than Ramirez. The one thing that J-Ram has in this argument is that he has a better eye, but either way Carita wins this argument. If you still think Ramirez is better after all of this, here are their Baseball Savant pages (the red highlights that they are in at least the top 10% in the league).
Rafael Devers
Jose Ramirez
I mean just look at all that red for Raffy, not only in his career, but also in 2022. #VoteDevers
While both of their advanced wins-above-replacement are extremely similar, so are their defensive WAR’s, at -0.2. Ramirez is a 3-time Gold Glove finalist, but Devers always gets a bad rap for his defensive play. It is unacceptable for an almost Gold Glover to post this number, as it should be positive to win a Gold Glove, but with Raffy, he has gotten better every single season, as he has posted his best success rate of his career, at 72%. With Ramirez on the other hand, his success rate has been going down the past couple of seasons, as this year he has his 4th worst, at 71%. I know they are similar numbers, but Devers is trending upwards defensively, while J-Ram is on the downward spiral. Another example of this is in defensive-runs-saved, which shows how many runs a player cost/saved his team. Currently, Raffy sits at -3, which is the best number posted of his career, down -13 from last year, while Ramirez has just -2 runs that he cost his team, last year he saved 10, so he has a 12-run difference trending in the wrong direction. #VoteDevers
Photo: David J. Phillip / AP
I know this was a lot of information for the average fan, but it shows how much better Raffy is than Ramirez, and why he deserves to be a starter in the All-Star Game. Devers is going to be around for a while, but in 2022 he should get his respect and a second consecutive start in the Mid-Summer Classic.
Note: All of the information that I used was from Baseball-Reference, and Baseball Savant, and I will link both players' pages down below if you want to do research yourself.
Rafael Devers: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/deverra01.shtml
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