Red Sox reveal why Rafael Devers kept dropping his bat during the playoffs – Boston.com

Red Sox

The Red Sox addressed Devers’ injury at their end-of-season press conference.

One of the mysteries of the Red Sox’s playoff run was why star infielder Rafael Devers kept dropping his bat.

Devers, who is known to take monstrous swings that sometimes don’t connect, often winced and let go of his bat after some of his more ambitious cuts. Whatever was wrong didn’t affect Devers much from a production standpoint — he batted .295/.392/.636 with five homers and 12 RBIs — but he looked clearly uncomfortable.

On Monday, at the team’s end-of-season press conference, Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom explained what was going on with his star third baseman.

“We did our best to get a handle on what was going on,” Bloom said. “Really [it was] elbow inflammation. It’s something we’re managing, nothing concerning. … Kudos to our medical staff and to Raffy for how he managed to play through it. Something that rest should do a lot to help.”

Devers told WEEI the issue was inflammation as well, which resulted in a “pinch” when he swung.

While Bloom called Devers and Xander Bogaerts “cornerstone” players for the Red Sox, a reporter asked Cora whether Devers might switch positions.

“We’re going to take a look at everything we did right and the things that didn’t go right,” Cora said. “Whenever we played good defense, we became a really really good team. And we got guys that are capable of it.

“There’s a lot of teams out there that [say], ‘Yeah, Raffy Devers quote-unquote struggles defensively,’ but on a daily basis, you want Raffy Devers. The same thing with Xander Bogaerts, the same thing with Christian Arroyo playing second base. We’ll address everything, we’ll talk about it. It’s so early, it’s too soon to start digging so deep into all this stuff, but I do believe the way we ended up playing, and the things we found out as a group defensively is going to make us better not only in the offseason but also next year.”