Rafael Devers is set for an emotional sort of homecoming Friday night, though the setting is one he knows all too well and one that looks very different now. He’s back in Boston for the first time since the Red Sox moved him to the San Francisco Giants in June of 2025, a deal that stunned the sport when it happened.
For a long stretch, Devers looked like the future in Boston. He had the biggest contract in town and was expected to be the long-term face of the franchise. Instead, the relationship unraveled and the Red Sox decided to move on, shipping him to San Francisco in a midseason trade that sent righty Jordan Hicks, lefty Kyle Harrison and prospects James Tibbs III and Jose Bello to Boston.
Most of that return has already vanished from the organization. Hicks, Harrison and Tibbs are gone, while Bello is still in the system and pitching for Class-A Salem, where he has a 3.92 ERA in 62 innings.
The bigger point, though, was never the package coming back. Boston made the move to get out from under Devers and the contract attached to him. And now, with the Giants in town for the series opener, Devers addressed the moment directly.
“It’s my first time coming back to Boston,” Devers said with team translator Erwin Higueros interpreting, as transcribed by Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I have not experienced this before, so I don’t know what to expect. ...
I simply want to say thank you very much for all the support they gave me through my years here. And they will always be special in my heart.”
He also spoke about the breakup in broader terms, calling it part of the game and nodding to the mistakes that come with it.
“I don’t want to think about the past. I don’t want to talk about the past.
But at the same time, we’re all men, we’re all grown-ups. We have to understand this is the business of baseball, but at the same time, you make mistakes and you have to move on and mature.”
The Red Sox have moved forward since the trade, too. They made the playoffs last year and are on track to get back there again. However messy the ending was between Boston and Devers, the organization has kept rolling.
Still, Friday should give the Fenway crowd a chance to show what it thinks. After that, the Devers story in Boston should finally start to fade.
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