This Red Sox season has sucked, but Ceddanne Rafaela hasn’t

I really feel like I’m been fairly unfavorable over the previous couple of weeks of Brushback articles. I want to vary up my mentality a lil’ bit.

This 2026 Pink Sox season, as everyone knows by now, has been tragic so far. Not sufficient offense, the pitching isn’t sufficient to hold them to victory on most nights despite their greatest efforts, the entrance workplace appears utterly aimless, yada yada yada. These are issues that you just haven’t already learn earlier than on OTM, be it from me or from any of my colleagues. Frankly, these are themes you’re seemingly gonna proceed to see because the summer season progresses as properly. The Craig Breslow query isn’t going away anytime quickly—properly, except FSG decides to provide him a pink slip within the coming days—and even after a sequence win in opposition to the Texas Rangers at residence (wait, we’re allowed to win a number of video games at Fenway????), the goals of seeing the Sox qualify for postseason ball appear to be simply that in the mean time: goals.

However we’ve obtained nothing however valuable time to complain about all of the shit that’s going flawed for Boston. The organizational cleaning soap opera will proceed, and I frankly don’t wish to sit right here and repeat the identical speaking factors/complaints each week that I sit down to jot down about this silly group. I’m positive you don’t wish to learn the identical article over and over and over, both. What’s the purpose of basically copying and pasting the identical Brushback article on a regular basis at this level? We’ll have weeks—possibly even months—to carry out an post-mortem on this season, how poorly the roster was constructed, all that enjoyable stuff. Our recurrently scheduled bellyaching will proceed lengthy into the canine days, wanting one thing astonishing occurring in Boston over the subsequent few months (I’m not holding my breath, however stranger issues have occurred; in spite of everything, the Knicks simply received a championship).

So whereas I can’t sit right here and let you know that my total outlook on the Pink Sox is optimistic—as a result of it clearly isn’t—I at the very least wished to shake up the mojo a little bit bit and shine a light-weight on a man who I haven’t given sufficient credit score to right here on the web site: Ceddanne Rafaela.

It’s Monday Morning Brushback time, y’all.

What a yr that Boston’s middle fielder is having, people. By means of his first 66 video games he’s logged a 2.2 fWAR; he’s on tempo to smash the profession excessive of three.8 he set final season. The numbers main into Saturday’s recreation don’t lie, as Jake Iggy of BoSox Speak identified on The Every little thing App:

A lil’ little bit of conventional stats when you want the old fashioned, a lil’ little bit of nerdy stats if you don’t like Manny Machado. Both approach you slice it: he’s been a productive hitter, as evidenced by the 127 OPS+ he’s notched main as much as Sunday’s finale in opposition to Texas.

Now if I advised you I used to be gonna write 1,000-ish phrases a couple of man with a .291/.346/.457 triple slash main as much as that Sunday evening matchup at Fenway, you would possibly scratch your head a little bit. “Positive, that’s a really stable output,” you could assume to your self, “however why are we specializing in him completely right here?”

All of us knew that Ceddy had some juice within the bat, however the massive query with him had been consistency; he’s obtained a little bit of JBJ in him attributable to his defensive wizardry and his affinity to modify between cold and hot in a jiffy.

One phrase jumps out at me when wanting beneath the hood when making an attempt to determine Rafaela’s development in 2026: competitiveness.

The most important difficulty I had with Ceddanne’s plate strategy within the early levels of his profession was that he gave up too many ABs too simply. Chasing after junk, not working counts, making dangerous swing choices, and many others. Even if you find yourself making contact, an strategy like that’s going to throw you off-kilter whenever you’re caught in between.

Now, even whenever you’re simply watching him, Ceddy seems rather more snug on the plate in comparison with the place he was when he first began within the bigs. After all, a few of that comes with time, but it surely’s fairly noticeable to me these days. Should you don’t belief the nice ol’ eye check: the easy indisputable fact that he’s minimize his whiff charge by almost 10 proportion factors for the reason that 2024 season, per Savant, ought to do lots of the heavy lifting right here. He’s not getting fooled as typically and that’s allowed him to deal extra injury on the dish.

To take it a step ahead and to play with my key phrase for Rafaela: as of Sunday morning, he ranked inside the prime 75 (simply barely—he was quantity 75 precisely) of aggressive swings throughout MLB this season. A elaborate dancy Statcast metric, a aggressive swing is outlined as “the quickest 90% of a participant’s swings, plus any 60+ MPH swings leading to an exit velocity of 90+ MPH.” For reference: Ceddy had 1,080 and 1,104 aggressive swings in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Rafaela put the ball in play by 31.6% of these aggressive swings in 2024 and 36.3% in 2025.

This season, that charge is 38.3%. It’s a marginal enchancment, sure, but it surely’s one which I believe speaks to the improved plate strategy. A greater strategy with improved plate self-discipline results in fewer whiffs, which ends up in extra aggressive ABs typically, which ends up in extra aggressive swings, which ends up in revenue.

None of this even mentions the knack Rafaela has to ship a clutch knock, by the best way, which is a trait that he’s actually proven throughout his massive league tenure.

Now, granted, Rafaela could be the beneficiary of some BABIP luck so far in 2026. His xwOBA and xSLG metrics are each under the thirtieth percentile leaguewide, and his anticipated batting common is just round .250 as I’m scripting this Sunday morning. The indicators of continued development are there, nevertheless, so I’m not completely spooked by these analytics. Enchancment isn’t all the time linear, and he’s nonetheless a comparatively younger man. There’s extra room for progress, and that begins with the game-to-game strategy that Ceddy’s implementing within the higher’s field.

All of that is to say that Ceddanne Rafaela needs to be an All-Star. He in all probability doesn’t begin the sport over Byron Buxton, positive, however who else has an apparent declare to an outfield place over him this season? The one man I can consider who would steal a spot over Ceddy might be Julio Rodriguez of the Mariners attributable to his energy numbers and his star standing, however I’ll take the man who’s OPS is 50 factors larger and is a platinum glove kind of fielder. Get Ceddanne to the Midsummer Basic, child.

Is the group dangerous? Sure. Is that this going to be an extended summer season in Boston? In all probability. Is the longer term unclear? I’m too scared to reply that query in earnest. However do we have now Ceddanne Rafaela patrolling middle? Sure, sure we actually do. So we obtained that going for us, which is good.

Track of the Week: “Two Of Us” by The Beatles

Hey, these guys are fairly good.

Till subsequent time, buddies! Go Sox.