Welcome to Week Four of our Patience or Panic series! Here, we look at players underperforming, evaluate possible reasons, and examine their worth. Do they deserve some grace? Some more time before you pull the plug? Or is it time to yank the cord from the wall and cut your losses? Let’s not waste any more time. So, shall we?
Rafael Devers, 1B/DH, San Francisco Giants
What a 12 months it’s been for Rafael Devers. He’s gone from beloved in Boston to becoming embattled to being shipped to San Francisco. It’s been a ride. And it’s still ongoing. Just not on the roads Devers would like.
Let’s get to the point: Devers isn’t playing well, and he’s hardly ingriating himself with San Franciscans. This year, he’s hitting .225/.266/.315 with a .581 OPS and a 62 wRC+. Previously a prolific power hitter, Devers has only two home runs. Some could argue that’s due to playing in the sandbox that is Oracle Park, but Devers only has two doubles. He’s not getting cheated. Devers’ expected stats say the same and don’t offer any off-ramp. According to them, Devers should be hitting .219 and .377, hardly massive differences.
Other issues are as follows: Devers’ strikeout rate is up, and his bat speed, though never elite, is a few ticks down. His chase rate is up, while his weak-contact rate is a little less than double what it was a season ago. Correspondingly, Devers’ hard-hit rate is down, as is his exit velocity and max exit velocity. There isn’t anything good in the bunch. Another metric that bears mentioning is Devers’ Zone-Contact Rate. Is he at least making contact with the pitches you gotta have? No.
When Devers was at his best in Boston, his Zone-Contact Rate was in the high 70s. This year it’s at 72.5%. In fairness, it was even lower last season, clocking in at 71.3%. And despite that, Devers still posted an .851 OPS. The same goes for 2023, when his Zone-Contact Rate was 71.9%, and he managed an .851 OPS.
Devers can make everything work without it. He can be an outlier. Still, it makes his life harder if he’s not crushing balls inside the zone.
One other particularly alarming stat is Devers’ walk rate. Devers walked 11.1% of the time in 2024 and 15.4% last season, a new career-best. In 2026, he’s touting a 5.3 walk rate, a more than 50% decline compared to last year’s mark. Discounting 2020, it would be a new career low, and it wouldn’t be all that close. With that in mind, it seems Devers is lost. He isn’t seeing the ball. Most of the time, that’s part and parcel of an acceptable slow start. But the Giants need Devers. They’ve given too much to get him and are counting him as the middle-of-the-order bat they haven’t had in ages. They need him to figure it out. And fast.
The Verdict: Beware. Devers is talented. And in theory, he’s in a lineup that can protect him. But this doesn’t look like the three-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger we’re used to.
Jarren Duran, OF, Boston Red Sox
From one player who made headlines in Boston to another. Let’s talk about Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran.
Duran, like his old teammate, is off to a poor start. In 16 games, he’s hitting .164/.243/.254 with a .497 OPS and a 39 wRC+. As far as run production goes, he’s tallied one home run and 10 RBI. It’s much removed from his 2024 slashline of .285/.342/.492 and his 2025 numbers.
That is the largest, broad concern. Duran’s gotten worse every single season since 2024, and to some extent, since 2023. From the moment he became an everyday player, or close to it, he’s gotten worse the more he’s been exposed.
As for his problems this season, they’re not so complicated. He’s chasing more than he did, striking out more, and not squaring the ball up or hitting it as hard. One particular issue is that Duran isn’t connecting with fastballs. In 2025, Duran torched fastballs, hitting .274 against them with a .476 slugging percentage. He fared better against offspeed pitches, but at a much smaller sample size. He saw offspeed pitches 15% of the time and fastballs 56.2% of the time.
This year, Duran is seeing fewer fastballs, a nice change by opponents. That said, it’s not an overwhelming change, going from that 56.2% to 52.6%. And yet Darren can’t touch them. He’s hitting .125 against heaters in 2026 with a .125 slugging percentage. He’s only hit singles. No doubles, no triples. Worse, he’s swinging through almost a third of them, registering a 32.1 Whiff%. And when he’s making contact, he’s hitting it 7.1 MPH slower.
