BOSTON -- On the eve of Rafael Devers' major-league debut last month, a Boston Red Sox official outlined the team's relatively-modest expectation for the top prospect's impact on the pennant race.
"Remember last year at the [trade] deadline when [president of baseball operations] Dave [Dombrowski] called up Beni?" the official said. "It'd be nice to get a similar jolt from Raffy."
Jolt? Devers has been more like a cardiac defibrillator.
With two more hits Tuesday night in a 10-4 rout of the St. Louis Cardinals, Devers joined Johnny Pesky (1942) and Tom Oliver (1930) as the only Red Sox players in the last 100 years with at least 23 hits in his first 17 big-league games.