HOUSTON — Out of necessity, the Red Sox have moved rookie Ceddanne Rafaela back and forth all season between center field and shortstop. Doing so, the club believes, has limited how much Rafaela has been able to showcase what they believe to be stellar defensive upside at short.
But on Wednesday, Rafaela — who has started 61 games in center and 59 at short so far this season — looked like a natural on the dirt. He made tough plays look easy behind Cooper Criswell and a parade of six Red Sox relievers, helping Boston limit the Astros to just one run on a day when the staff only struck out nine.
“He’s a heck of an athlete, man,” said Criswell. “It’s almost like you expect something crazy from him every night defensively. I would say he’s one day going to win a Gold Glove out there either in center or even at short.”
Rafaela fielded seven grounders at shortstop Wednesday and converted outs on all of them in addition to tagging out a would-be base stealer (Yainer Diaz) for the third out of the first inning. But that wasn’t the only way he contributed to a 4-1 rubber game win. The 23-year-old, who had gone 16 games without an extra-base hit before doubling in Tuesday’s win, laced two two-out RBI doubles, first to give the Sox the lead against Justin Verlander in the second inning and later to tack on an insurance run in the seventh.
Rafaela said his offensive showing was the result of a batting cage session in which he tried to get more on top of the ball after hitting many empty fly balls in recent weeks.
“Coming into the day, I didn’t really feel good,” he said. “I went to the cage knowing Verlander was about to start so I had to be ready. To come through in those moments for me and the team, right now it’s huge.”
Somewhat quietly, Rafaela leads all MLB rookies in hits (118), RBIs (61), total bases (184) and runs (63) so far this season. That, as the No. 9 hitter in a pretty good lineup, is gravy for the Red Sox, who view the Curaçao native as a defense-first player. The Red Sox, in a perfect world, would have Rafaela be their full-time center fielder. But the circumstances of the roster (with every outfielder healthy and producing and Trevor Story still out) have made it so he has bounced back and forth. In fact, Rafaela it ehf rist player since at least 1901 to play 60+ games each at center field and short in a season.
Manager Alex Cora feels like it’s no coincidence that Rafaela put on a show defensively Wednesday in what was his fifth start at shortstop in six games after a period of 11 games in which he started there just once. The Red Sox feel that Rafaela is a better shortstop than the numbers suggest (Statcast has Rafaela at nine runs below average as a shortstop).
“He’s playing better and better and he’s gonna play a lot of short the rest of the way,” Cora said. “That’s the tough part. We know how good he can be at short. We know how great he is in center field. But the moving around, it takes away from good jumps and being engaged. It takes him a while to do that. But he has been playing short a lot and you can see him now. He’s making plays.”
The defensive highlights of Rafaela’s day included charging in on a slow roller to gun down Chas McCormick in the third inning and a cross-body throw to throw out Jeremy Peña (thanks to a nice scoop by Triston Casas) on a back-hand grounder in the sixth. It continued a two-day stellar stretch of infield defense for a team that has struggled in that area all year.
“It’s a testament of who he is, the athlete,” Cora said. “There’s a lot of stuff he does because he can do it. He’s athletic enough. But now angles are better, decision-making is better because he’s getting more reps at the position.”
“We played good defense. We’re going to go as far as our defense dictates. If we can slow it down and play better defensively, we’re gonna be OK.”
