Giants' Rafael Devers has been MLB's most disappointing player for 3 reasons originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The 2026 MLB season is off to a brutal start fr the San Francisco Giants. Tony Vitello's team isn't playing well, and if it weren't for the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, the Giants' start might be the worst in all of baseball.
But, there is one player on the Giants roster that is off to an incredibly disappointing start to the year, and it's superstar slugger Rafael Devers.
As USA Today's Bob Nightengale questioned, "Is there a more disappointing player in the game than San Francisco Giants first baseman Rafael Devers?" There are three reasons why Devers can make a case as the biggest disappointment in MLB this season.
So far this season, through 28 games, Devers has had 117 plate appearances. He is hitting .216 with a .256 on-base percentage, a .306 slugging percentage, and a brutal .563 OPS.
His 61 OPS+ is by far the worst of his career, and it's less than half os his 141 OPS+ last season between the Boston Red Sox and Giants.
He has just two home runs this season, and a rough 6-to-36 walk-to-strikeout ratio. The 30.8% strikeout rate is by far the highest of his career.
Those are some terrible numbers to begin the year, especially for someone making as much as Devers. And yet, the numbers get worse.
"If you factor in his defensive struggles and lack of speed, he has a negative 1 WAR," Nightengale writes.
According to his Baseball Savant page, aside from his brutal second-percentile batting run value, he has a 14th percentile base-running run value and a ninth percentile fielding run value.
This season at first base, he has two errors and negative three defensive runs saved. The move over to a new position hasn't gone well, and he's one of the worst fielders in the sport overall.
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Devers was acquired from the Red Sox for a haul, as the Giants sent Jose Bello, James Tibbs III, Kyle Harrison, and Jordan Hicks for Devers.
While Hicks didn't work out for the Red Sox, and Harrison and Tibbs were later traded by Boston, the cost was still fairly steep for the Giants to acquire Devers.
But the big reason why this cost to pick Devers up in a trade has made him MLB's biggest disappointment this season is that the Giants took on the remaining years of his $313.5 million deal through 2033.
Overall, there haven't been many players who can compare to Devers this season when it comes to being a disappointment for their teams.
He isn't out due to an injury, and he isn't simply just getting unlucky. Devers is struggling, and badly, in every phase of the game right now.
His presence at the plate has dipped, he's struggling in the field, and his baserunning isn't getting any better. Combined with his massive contract and the players the Giants gave up to get him, this is looking like a colossal mistake on the Giants' part.
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