CHICAGO --- The Boston Red Sox won 108 games last season, then blitzed all comers during an October run to their fourth World Series title of the 21st century. They did all that despite a couple of odd-looking holes on their performance grid. Ranked by WAR, their second basemen in 2019 were 29th in total output, their catchers and third basemen even worse, finishing 30th.
It's something weird and wonderful that a team could rank in the bottom two at three different positions and still power its way to a championship. It's also a bit misleading in some ways, but the bottom line is that as good as the Red Sox were, there was actually room for improvement. So far this season, Boston's catchers have hit better -- a low bar to clear -- to rank 16th, and third baseman Rafael Devers has demonstrated a more consistent approach at the plate to help elevate the Sox's hot corner production to 12th overall. But second base -- where Dustin Pedroia continues to battle knee trouble and Eduardo Nunez has had both health and performance issues -- remains a sore spot.
That brings us to Michael Chavis, Boston's merciless basher of a rookie, who might just be the missing link in the Red Sox's climb back to prime contention.
Chavis clubbed two more homers in Chicago on Saturday night. It was a rude way for a guest to behave, what with it being Star Wars night and a robust gathering of 30,000 holding their R2-D2 bobbleheads close. Chavis wasn't the only rude visitor, as Boston rolled to a 15-2 rout to move within two games of .500.
The Red Sox rang up 10 straight hits at one point, all of them off White Sox starter Manny Banuelos, who, to that point, hadn't allowed a baserunner among the first eight hitters he faced. No pitcher had given up 10 straight hits, at least going back to 1957, according to Elias Sports Bureau data. So for one night, at least, the Red Sox were back to doing historic things.
"It was probably my favorite game so far," an effusive Chavis said after the game. "I don't think I've ever, ever had an inning like that in pro ball."
Right now, Chavis sounds like a guy having a lot of fun with his first go-around as a big leaguer, and why wouldn't he be? The two bombs gave Chavis a half-dozen in his first 14 big league games, something only Sam Horn (1987) has done in the long annals of one of the game's flagship franchises. One verifiable thing we can already observe about Chavis is that his raw power is for real -- his three longest homers are the three longest homers clouted by any Boston hitter all season.
After his latest outburst, Chavis is now tied for fourth in all of baseball with a .771 slugging percentage, if you dial the qualification meter back to 50 plate appearances. He's hitting .354/.466/.771 overall, so it's not just homers. He has started 10 games at second, two at first and one at third, his primary position while coming up through the Boston system.
"We've seen him stay in the middle of the field," Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. "Gets a base hit to right field. He has a pretty good idea about hitting. He understands his moves and what he wants to do every at-bat."
Chavis, 23, is an actual prospect, not some 27-year-old Triple-A guy hitting the majors while surfing his career's crest. ESPN's Keith Law didn't have Chavis, or anyone else from the Boston system, ranked in his top 100, but he did have him ranked as the club's No. 5 prospect overall. Law wrote, "I think he's trade bait at this point and could help everyone with a healthy first half where he shows he can use the whole field. I'm not sure he's anyone's regular at third though."
Those comments do pump the brakes on the Chavis locomotive, don't they? His career line over six minor league seasons is .257/.325/.468. After he hit 31 homers across two levels in 2017 at age 21, he then missed half of last season because of a PED suspension. He started this season with four homers in 12 games for Pawtucket and has since done even better since being summoned to Boston. On one hand, that's not the pattern we'd expect, given the realities of minor league equivalencies, but on the other -- being in a major league clubhouse is an entirely different animal. And Boston has one of the best.
"The scouting reports we get, they're so elaborate," Chavis said. "Everything that goes on in the game, between shifts and defensive alignments, sequencing. There is so much going on and everybody has just kind of helped me out with that. I honestly think that I've learned more and grown more as a player in these past two weeks that I've been up here than I did the entire year last year."
It's safe to say Chavis' numbers to date are a fluke. We see this from time to time. A hard-hitting rookie comes up, and during his first trip around the majors, he looks like the second coming of Jimmie Foxx. But then someone figures out he can't hit a high four-seamer or can't lay off a slider in the dirt, and the numbers start circling the drain.
The question isn't whether Chavis' numbers will stay where they are. The question is whether they will settle in at a level at which he adds significant value to the Boston infield mix.
Let's consider the six homers Chavis has hit so far:
1. April 23: 441 feet, Victor Alcantara (Detroit), changeup
2. April 25: 374 feet, Jordan Zimmermann (Detroit), slider
3. April 28: 441 feet, Tyler Glasnow (Tampa Bay), four-seamer
4. May 3: 459 feet, Reynaldo Lopez (Chicago), slider
5. May 4: 419 feet, Manny Banuelos (Chicago), slider
6. May 4: 438 feet, Josh Osich (Chicago), cutter
Touching up the 2019 version of Glasnow is a nice bit of work, but overall, we're not talking about a Cy Young leaderboard. That's not to discount what Chavis has done -- six homers in the major leagues in 14 games is amazing, no matter what context you apply to them. But they aren't necessarily all that predictive.
So it's a good thing that among his early lessons, one is that the homers already in the statbook don't matter that much to Chavis, who claimed to have extrapolated a lot from a little during the first game in Chicago on Thursday, when he went 0-for-3 with a walk.
"Honestly, I didn't swing the bat well the first night," Chavis said. "I became too focused on the results. I had some success early on, and I think I kind of got caught up in making the results happen instead of focusing on the process. That's one of the big things I focus on is being process-oriented."
Don't sweat the results! Focus on the process! It's the mantra in every clubhouse these days, as if every player had read the same Zig Ziglar book.
Process does generate results, though, Chavis' past results spurred the Steamer projection system to give him a forecast for a .251/.315/.450 line this year -- and that still seems like a reasonable baseline to work from. It's not a line that, once you account for the defensive aspect, is going to uproot Pedroia if he can get on a run of decent health, and it's certainly not going to uproot Devers.
Nunez, on the other hand, has a .283/.309/.413 line over the past three seasons. It's a different look -- less power, to be sure, but more contact. Plus Nunez does more on the basepaths. However, Nunez is one of those odd, cross-split ducks who, though he's a righty hitter, has generally struggled against lefties over his career. Devers is a lefty hitter, as is primary first baseman Mitch Moreland, who has been mostly platooned during his career.
Chavis wasn't a lefty masher as a minor leaguer; he was more neutral in terms of platoon splits. That's still a complementary skill set to everything else Boston has on the infield. He can spell Moreland, as he did on Saturday. He can do the same for Devers. He can provide a power alternative to Nunez and serve as insurance for Pedroia. All of this may be especially important after Tzu-Wei Lin sprained his knee in Friday's game and hit the injured list.
We don't know how much of Chavis' power surge is real or how long it will last. But we can already see that the powerhouse rookie adds a dimension to the Boston infield that it lacked. It's not easy for any player to do that on a defending-champion team, much less one just 14 games into his career.
"I can't say enough about the guys in the clubhouse right now," Chavis said. "I'm not saying that just because it's cliché or anything like that. They have absolutely done everything to make me comfortable. I can't say enough about Mookie [Betts], J.D. [Martinez], [Steve] Pearce and everybody within the clubhouse."
It has been some 14 games for Chavis, and as the Red Sox try to get back to the path they sprinted down in 2019, Chavis' presence could hardly have been better-timed. Chavis is the newest Boston basher, joining a team a few months removed from the most precious thing in the sport. And while he wasn't a direct part of the championship, he has fit right in with some of the biggest names in baseball.
And Chavis gets it. Rookies only claim the blame -- all credit goes to teammates. That part of his arsenal at last seems clearly sustainable.
"I think [helping me] says a lot about the guys not just as players, but their character," Chavis said. "It would be easy to see the new guy come in and brush him off, but they've helped me a lot. I'm very thankful."