Rafael Devers' fastball problem is bad news for Giants after Red Sox trade

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Rafael Devers was supposed to be the leading hitter for the San Francisco Giants for the next decade.

But about a year after the Boston Red Sox traded Devers away, the lefty slugger isn't hitting much of anything.

There may be one thing that stands out more than anything else as far as Devers is concerned: He's not hitting fastballs.

Fastballs, while they are thrown harder and move more than ever, are still the pitches that most batters have to make their money against.

Devers has been one of baseball's worst against heaters.

"Especially alarming is his struggles against four-seam fastballs -- he’s hitting .146 (6-for-41) with a 51.1% whiff rate and a 59.5% strikeout rate on those pitches this year," MLB.com's Thomas Harrigan wrote in a new article this weekend.

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It's not just about the fastballs, though. Harrigan broke down the whole situation.

"This is one of the worst stretches of Devers' career," Harrigan wrote. "He's recorded a .540 OPS through 32 games this season and posted MLB’s fourth-largest drop in barrel rate (-8.9 points) and the largest drop in walk rate (-10.1 points) since last season. He's also struck out nearly 30% of the time as a member of the Giants after sitting around 21% during his stint with the Red Sox."

Maybe Devers truly is a hitter in decline, or maybe he's just in a massive funk.

Either way, his best bet to turning things around is to start getting on fastballs. If he doesn't hit those, Devers isn't going to get better anytime soon.

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