The White Sox acquired Frazier from the Cincinnati Reds before last season. At the time Frazier was coming off back-to-back 4+ WARP seasons, which was largely a function of his ability to frequently hit baseballs over the fence. Since landing with the Pale Hose, things have not gone as well:

The power has still (mostly) been there, but that is about it. He does not get on-base at an acceptable rate, strikes out a lot (24.1 K%) and his work with the glove, while better so far in 2017, was well below average last season (and for his career). This season has been standout ugly: .195/.289/.350 (.246 TAv). Frazier is on the wrong-side of 30, so his skills are most likely in decline. At this point, he really only provides the one skill (power), so once it goes, all of his value will too. It is tempting to explain away his 2017 numbers with his .217 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), but Frazier has tended to run a lower than typical BABIP (.275 for his career) and his current batted ball profile supports, at least to some extent, the really low mark. According to measures from StatCast, it seems like his power is already going, as Frazier is hitting the ball with less authority this year: his 2017 average exit velocity of 86.9 mph is down almost 2 mph from last year, which was down 0.5 mph from the year before that. Couple that with his lower average launch angle, and lower rate of barreling-up the ball and you have a decent explanation for his lack of production this season, and a reasonable case for projecting a lower home run total for him this year. Simply put, he is making more soft contact.

With all that said, it is still early, and you could hypothesize that his rough 2017 numbers are mostly a function of hitting in the cold air of Chicago in April and May, but at this time last year he was hitting .228/.319/.494 with 13 HRs, and his average exit velocity (87.9 mph) and launch angle (20.8) were not far off his end of season numbers. Taken together, the data suggest he is not the player he was a couple of years ago.

Maybe with all that I, or rather Todd Frazier’s recent performance, have convinced you that he is not going to come in and be the savior the Red Sox need at third base. As has been noted on this very website, the Red Sox have been a mess at third base for too long. To remind you how bad it has been lately, here are the numbers that all Red Sox third basemen not named Travis Shaw have posted the last two years:

Not great, fellas. With Pablo Sandoval working his way back from a knee injury, Brock Holt dealing with the frightening aftermath of a concussion, Marco Hernandez done for the year due to a shoulder injury, and the Josh Rutledge/Deven Marrero duo doing their level best, it is hard to see better production than Frazier could offer coming. Unless, of course, they promote top-prospect Rafael Devers.

Devers can flat-out hit. This year at Double-A Portland, he has posted a .320 TAv in 144 plate appearances. The Red Sox have stated they want to give Devers more time to develop, and that is a perfectly reasonable approach to hold. I am generally in favour of not rushing players to the big leagues, since not all 20/21-year olds can blast through the minor leagues to be productive at the major league level like Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, and Mookie Betts. Alternatively, keeping Devers in Portland for another few weeks is a service time issue, and the Red Sox want to hold off on promoting him as long as they can in order to limit when he can be eligible for salary arbitration (and eventually free agency). The fuzzy date of the Super Two deadline, which is directly relevant for dictating how much service time a player will accumulate, should pass in two to three weeks. If Devers is still raking for the Sea Dogs by then, Sandoval and Holt are still not ready to play, and the Rutledge/Marrero stopgap has gone as expected, then it would not totally surprise me to see Devers in a Red Sox uniform.

Promoting Devers would be aggressive for sure, but the expected difference between him and Frazier is perhaps smaller than you think. Here are their median PECOTA projections (rest-of-season for Frazier; preseason forecast for Devers):

With this in mind, why give up any talent and/or take on any salary to get Frazier – I assume the White Sox will eat most of the remaining money Frazier is owed – when you have similar expected production in-house? Certainly, there is risk either way. Maybe Devers isn’t ready. Maybe Frazier’s 30+ home run days are behind him. For me, the critical issue is that taking on one of those risks does not involve relinquishing any more talent from an already depleted minor league system. Devers is possibly the future at third base. Give him a chance to show what he can do. What’s more is that if Devers were to be called up at the start of July and turns into a pumpkin over the course of two weeks, the Red Sox will still have time to explore a trade for a third baseman before the non-waiver trade deadline. Or who knows, maybe by then Sandoval and/or Holt could be ready to get back on the field everyday for the stretch run.

You don’t have to go too far back in history to find a Red Sox team that succeeded with ugliness at the hot corner. In 2013, the Red Sox won the division and the World Series while giving most of the playing time at third base to Will Middlebrooks, Jose Iglesias, Brock Holt, Pedro Ciriaco, and Brandon Snyder before some 20-year old kid named Xander Bogaerts came up and took over. This is obviously a cherry-picked example, but it is one that the team can and should follow. Todd Frazier does not make this team much better in the short term (relative to in-house options), but will affect the long term and/or the possibility of other acquisitions due to his cost. Give Devers a chance, and forget about Frazier.

Photo by Kirby Lee – USA TODAY Sports

Top Play (WPA): With Jimmy Rollins on first and one out in the bottom of the first inning, Jose Abreu hit a triple to right-center field (.139 WPA) that Jackie Bradley Jr. misplayed. You read that right. Bradley got a great jump on the ball and tracked it beautifully, per usual, but he then let the ball get by him after it bounced off the wall, which turned a probable scoring play into a definite one. This has been a pattern for JBJ this year; as incredible as he is in space, he needs to read balls off walls better.

The Red Sox’s best play of the night goes to Hanley Ramirez, who launched a solo homer off Quintana in the fifth inning for his second bomb of the season.

Bottom Play (WPA): This honor falls to David Ortiz, who made the brutal mistake of striking out with a runner first and no one out in the seventh inning (-.065). That such an innocuous play registers as the worst of the night should illustrate the trouble the Red Sox had getting runners on base all day. So should the fact that they only recorded four hits.

Key Moment: The entire bottom of the eighth, really, but the one key here was Abreu’s two-RBI double on a pitch that nearly hit him in the knee. Seriously. Tazawa was awful in this game, missing all over the place and throwing the ball into the ground, but the pitch Abreu smoked into left field wasn’t bad. Just a case of a great hitter doing a great job of hitting.

Trend to Watch: Well there weren’t any particularly enlightening trends in this one, so let’s focus on the good: Carson Smith is back! Smith was dominant in his one inning of work, getting a groundout on his second pitch and later striking out Austin Jackson. So far so good for the man who should make a big impact in Boston’s bullpen.

Also … Steven Wright is good.

Coming Next: The Red Sox send Clay Buchholz to the mound against Carlos Rodon, thanks to Chicago’s recent DFAing of John Danks. Buchholz has been pretty bad this season, but the saving grace here is he’s so volatile that you never know when he’ll turn in a good start!

Photo by David Banks/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA): Conforming to the tradition of first innings in this series, Jose Abreu cranked a two-run homer off Steven Wright, good for a .191 WPA and an early 2-0 for Chicago. By no means was it a bad pitch – Wright threw a good knuckleball that scraped the bottom the zone, but Abreu’s freakish strength took that ball from his shins to the Red Sox bullpen. Hanley Ramirez takes the cake for the Red Sox on this one, as his two-out RBI single in the 5th inning knotted the game at two runs apiece.

Bottom Play (WPA): In the most 2015 Red Sox moment of the day, Pablo Sandoval struck out by swinging and missing on a fastball that hit him in the wrist. That was worth -.066 WPA, and you couldn’t help but feel sad for Sandoval, who has taken so much flak this week for his conditioning. He’s currently day-to-day, but you weren’t alone if you assumed he had broken something after getting beaned.

Key Moment: Jackie Bradley Jr. hitting an RBI single off of Chris Sale to push the lead to 4-2. The Sox had sort of thrown JBJ into the fire in his first two games back by having him face Jose Quintana and Chris Sale, but he looked much more composed tonight. Sale is unbelievably tough on lefties, but Bradley stayed on a slider and hit it the other way into left-center field. The hit was the beginning of the swan song for Sale, as Brock Holt tallied another RBI single immediately after to chase the southpaw from the game. It’s promising progress for the outfielder, who needs – and deserves – playing time in the majors after hitting .302/.382/.472 in 318 PA at Pawtucket this year.

Trend to Watch: Outfielders contributing. I’ve already gone over the #turningpoint that Bradley engineered, but both Hanley Ramirez and Rusney Castillo put in work tonight. Hanley’s RBI single evened the score at 2-2 and mercifully didn’t hurt the Sox with bad defense, while Rusney Castillo absolutely destroyed a hanging sinker off Matt Albers to the seats in center field. It wasn’t a cheap one.

429′, 106 MPH on that Castillo dinger

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) July 31, 2015

He’s got two months to establish himself as Boston’s right fielder for 2016. This is a pretty good sign of things to come.

Coming Next: The Tampa Bay Rays come to town, and the Red Sox will send out Eduardo Rodriguez to face off against Erasmo Ramirez in the first game of a three-game set. Are you ready for some post-trade deadline baseball? Yeah. Me neither.

Photo by Mark L. Baer/USA Today Sports Images