The last time Rafael Devers played third base, an umpire put him there

On the second of September last year, at Coors Field, Rafael Devers batted in the top of the first inning with Heliot Ramos on base and hit the ball into the seats in right field. It was his thirtieth home run of 2025. San Francisco led 2-0 before Colorado had recorded an out.

What happened after that is in the play-by-play as an on-field delay, and the record does not say what was said during it. Home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi ejected Colorado's pitcher, Kyle Freeland. Then he ejected Willy Adames, who had not yet seen a pitch. Then he ejected Matt Chapman, who was the Giants' third baseman.

Devers had started that game at first base. In the bottom of the first, before Colorado came to bat, he moved across the infield to third and Dominic Smith took over at first. Devers played the rest of the game there. Three ground balls came to him in nine innings. He threw all three to first base, and all three men were out.

He has not played the position since.

951#

Devers played third base for the Boston Red Sox in every season he spent there. Fifty-six games in 2017, the year he came up at twenty. Then 116, then 152, then 57 in the short season, then 151, then 138, then 151, then 130 in 2024. Those add to 951 games at third base across eight years.

Since the start of the 2025 season he has played nine innings there.

Both numbers come off the league's own fielding record, and the second one is the Tuesday night in Denver.

February#

Boston signed Alex Bregman in February of 2025. Bregman had won a Gold Glove at third base the season before, with Houston. On Monday, February 17, Devers spoke to reporters at spring training through an interpreter.

"Third base is my position," he said. "It's what I've played. I don't know what their plans are. I know we had a conversation. I made it clear, kind of what my desires were, and whatever happens from here, I don't know."

He was asked whether he would move to designated hitter. He answered before the interpreter could turn the question over.

"No."

Five weeks later, on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 26, Alex Cora went on WEEI in Boston and closed it.

"We had conversations throughout Spring Training, and [Devers] was very vocal about how he felt," Cora said. "We made a decision. Alex is going to play third, and Raffy is going to DH. We all are in the winning business, and [Devers] understands that." And: "It's like everything, you don't have to agree with it, but at the end of the day, [this is] what we're going to do to perform every single day."

Boston opened the season in Arlington the next afternoon. Devers was the designated hitter.

The decision was defensible and the numbers under it are not close. Counting from 2017, the year Devers debuted, defensive runs saved had Bregman at plus 21 at third base and Devers at minus 62. That is the comparison MLB.com laid side by side the week Cora announced it.

May#

Triston Casas played his last game of 2025 on May 2. He ruptured the patellar tendon in his left knee, had surgery, and Boston's first baseman was gone for the year.

Craig Breslow, the club's chief baseball officer, asked Devers whether he would move there. On Thursday, May 8, speaking through team interpreter Daveson Perez, Devers said he had told him no.

"I know I'm a ballplayer, but at the same time, they can't expect me to play every single position out there," he said. "In Spring Training, they talked to me and basically told me to put away my glove and I wasn't going to play any other position but DH."

Asked whether he might change his mind, he said no before the question was finished.

"I don't feel that they were true to their word," Devers said. "They told me that I was going to play this position, DH, and now they're going back on that. I just don't think they [are] staying true with their word."

Boston traded him thirty-eight days later. On Sunday, June 15, Devers went to San Francisco and Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks, Jose Bello and James Tibbs III went to Boston. The league's transaction log writes the deal in its own words and describes the player who moved as a designated hitter. Two months earlier the same log had called him a third baseman.

July#

He was the Giants' designated hitter for twenty-nine games. Then, on Tuesday, July 22, at Truist Park in Atlanta, Rafael Devers started at first base. He was twenty-eight and it was the first time in his life he had played the position in a major league game.

Nothing was hit to him. He recorded four putouts, every one of them a throw from Casey Schmitt or Willy Adames. He went 2-for-5 with a double and a run batted in, and San Francisco won and ended a six-game losing streak.

Afterward, through interpreter Erwin Higueros, he said he had been nervous for a couple of innings and then was not. He was asked about the glove he was wearing.

"It's my own glove," Devers said. "I ordered it the second day I arrived [in] San Francisco."

Seventy-five days earlier he had said Boston told him to put his glove away. He had been a Giant for two days when he ordered a new one.

That is not a man changing his mind about first base. Read back what he objected to in Boston and almost none of it is about the position. He said they could not expect him to play every position out there. He said he had been given two months at one job before being asked to learn another. He said they had not been true to their word. The complaint is about being moved, twice, in two directions, by people who had already told him something else. Nobody in San Francisco had told him anything yet, and he gave his own reason for wanting to be out there the same night in Atlanta:

"It keeps me active and it keeps my head out of just thinking of the next at-bat. I'm the kind of player who likes to be active and likes to be on the field. I'd rather be on the field than be in the cage hitting all the time."

Six weeks after that, in Denver, Matt Chapman was ejected in the first inning and Rafael Devers spent nine innings at third base. Three chances, three assists, no errors. It has not happened again.

What the season was#

In 2026 Devers played 100 games at first base and was the designated hitter in 48 more. At first base he took 827 putouts and made 71 assists and eight errors.

He did all of it with a core muscle injury. In a statement released Sunday, the Giants said he "managed this issue for much of the season and chose to keep playing through it." Tony Vitello said the problem went back further than this season and had been difficult to diagnose. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area, who had been asking, wrote that Vitello was vague about Devers's health all season and that the club had been hiding a significant injury.

Devers appeared in 148 of the 149 games San Francisco completed before his season ended. The one he missed was Wednesday, September 9, a day off Vitello said was overdue.

On Saturday, September 12, against San Diego, Devers was the designated hitter. In the bottom of the first inning he hit a Michael King pitch to right center field and Drew Gilbert scored ahead of him. It was his thirty-seventh home run. He grounded out to first base in the third, grounded out softly to the pitcher in the sixth, and struck out swinging in the eighth against Adrian Morejon.

He had last stood on a field on Tuesday, September 8, against St. Louis: nine innings at first base, twelve putouts, one assist, no errors.

The next afternoon San Francisco put him on the 60-day injured list. He finished with a .258 average, 37 home runs, 36 doubles, 98 RBIs and 161 strikeouts in 148 games. The 36 doubles were tied for the most in the major leagues on the day he stopped, with Wilyer Abreu, Alec Burleson and Bryan Reynolds, and those three are still playing.

On Tuesday, in Philadelphia, Dr. William Meyers repaired the left side of his core. He is the surgeon who operated on Matt Chapman earlier this summer. Vitello said before Tuesday night's game against St. Louis that the procedure went the way the club expected.

"Got done what they needed to do," Vitello said. "They felt like he'll do well afterwards, do well with the recovery."

The baseline is about three months, which ends in the middle of December. Camp opens in February.

Rafael Devers is twenty-nine, and he turns thirty next month. He played 951 games at third base, and then nine innings, and the nine innings happened because an umpire threw somebody else out of a game.

The league keeps a file on every player in it, and one of the fields in that file is the position he primarily plays. His says first base.

Sources: MLB Stats API, read September 16, 2026: Devers's year-by-year and game-by-game fielding record (personId 646240), his 2026 season hitting line and game log, the transaction log for 2025 and 2026, and the play-by-play and box score of the September 2, 2025 game at Coors Field (gamePk 776486) and the September 12, 2026 game against San Diego (gamePk 823170). Triston Casas's 2025 game log (personId 671213) for the date of his last game. MLB.com, March 26, 2025, for Cora's WEEI remarks and the defensive runs saved comparison; May 8, 2025, for Devers's remarks through Daveson Perez; July 23, 2025, for his first-base debut and his remarks through Erwin Higueros; and September 15, 2026, for the surgery and Vitello's remarks. Yahoo Sports, February 17, 2025, carrying Devers's spring training remarks as reported by MLB.com and NESN. The San Francisco Standard, September 13, 2026, for the club's statement. NBC Sports Bay Area, Alex Pavlovic, September 13, 2026.