{"id":14411,"date":"2025-07-22T21:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/14411\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T21:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:57:08","slug":"giants-rafael-devers-to-make-first-career-start-at-first-base-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/14411\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants&#8217; Rafael Devers to make first career start at first base"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jul 22, 2025, 04:38 PM ET<\/p>\n<p><a data-player-guid=\"9a29840a-6ec6-8b17-995a-f01bc7567f2d\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/33859\/rafael-devers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rafael Devers<\/a>, who was traded to the <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"e072b79c-4fa1-3a55-bdcd-4d7d9734d79b\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/sf\/san-francisco-giants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">San Francisco Giants<\/a> in June after he made it known to the <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"c6df06f6-785d-3900-4935-5fd13742e2ee\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/bos\/boston-red-sox\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Boston Red Sox<\/a> that he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/45059014\/rafael-devers-tells-red-sox-move-first-base\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">didn&#8217;t want to play first base<\/a>, will make his first start at the position on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p>The Red Sox signed Gold Glove third baseman <a data-player-guid=\"b28542aa-30be-6851-75c4-501226976e1c\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/34886\/alex-bregman\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Bregman<\/a> during spring training and asked Devers to move to designated hitter. He balked before agreeing to the switch, but when Boston first baseman <a data-player-guid=\"2532f215-1d37-8d8c-0141-611178078e0a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/41180\/triston-casas\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Triston Casas<\/a> suffered a season-ending injury, the Red Sox approached Devers about playing the position and he declined.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<p>2 Related<\/p>\n<p>When he arrived in the Bay Area, Devers insisted he&#8217;d do anything asked of him to help the Giants win, and he&#8217;s been doing regular fielding work at first base in preparation for his debut at the position.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;ll be batting third against the <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"122673a3-bf06-4432-6950-b8a32e52ac2e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/atl\/atlanta-braves\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Atlanta Braves<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>A three-time All-Star, Devers signed a $313.5 million, 10-year contract with the Red Sox in 2023. The Giants <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/45520142\/red-sox-trade-all-star-slugger-rafael-devers-giants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acquired him in June<\/a> to boost their offense, and since then, Devers has been slotted into the lineup as the team&#8217;s designated hitter.<\/p>\n<p>Asked why he was willing to play the position for the Giants and not the Red Sox, Devers said he felt he had &#8220;earned some respect&#8221; because of his production in Boston, adding that he would have made the switch if the Red Sox had asked at the beginning of spring training.<\/p>\n<p>Devers has been dealing with a disk injury in his lower back that has limited his production since joining the Giants, as he&#8217;s hitting .219 with 2 home runs and 10 RBIs in 29 games since the trade. Overall, he&#8217;s hitting .257 with 17 home runs and 68 RBIs on the season.<\/p>\n<p>The Giants took a six-game losing streak into their meeting with the Braves that dropped them to 52-49, 3 1\/2 games out of a wild-card playoff spot. San Francisco ranked 23rd in the majors in runs per game.<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 22, 2025, 04:38 PM ET Rafael Devers, who was traded to the San Francisco Giants in June&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-14411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}