Red Sox

How oddsmakers project certain Red Sox players will perform in 2022

Oddsmakers expect Rafael Devers to be one of the best hitters in baseball in 2022.

By Conor Roche

April 3, 2022

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After a slightly delayed start, Opening Day for the 2022 season is just days away. That also means you only have a few days remaining to get some final player prop bets in before the season starts.

Several sportsbooks have set over/unders for some key players on the Red Sox. They’ve also set odds on certain players’ chances to win the American League’s biggest awards, such as Most Valuable Player and the Cy Young Award.

Here are the odds and projections sportsbooks have placed on several key Red Sox players for the 2022 MLB season.

Rafael Devers

Over/under 37.5 homers (+100/-120). Over/under 113.5 RBIs (-120/+100). Over/under 171.5 hits (-120/+100). More home runs than Aaron Judge (Yes -115/No -105). MLB home run leader +1500, RBI leader +1200, hits leader +1600, runs leader +2200. American League MVP winner +2000 (via DraftKings Sportsbook).

Rafael Devers is the player oddsmakers like the most on the Red Sox this season, giving him team-high over/unders in homers, RBIs, and hits while also giving him the best odds on the team to win MVP.

Devers has cleared 37.5 homers just once in his career, but it came last season when he hit a team-high 38. Excluding the 2020 COVID-shortened season, Devers’ home run total has gone up every season in his five-year career. FanGraphs projects Devers to get close to the total with 37 homers this season, while Baseball-Reference projects him to not be close to it with 29 homers.

Devers finished last season with 113 RBIs and had 115 RBIs in the 2019 season, so his over/under for RBIs is very close to what he’s had the last two seasons. FanGraphs projects him to have 112 RBIs while Baseball-Reference doesn’t even have him cracking the century mark (97).

Devers had 201 hits in the 2019 season but that dipped down to 165 in 2021. FanGraphs projects Devers to get 168 hits this season while Baseball-Reference has him for 153.

In the interesting player vs. player home run bet between him and Judge, Devers has higher odds. However, Judge actually hit one more homer than Devers in 2021 (39 to 38). FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference both project Judge to hit more homers than Devers this season (41 on FanGraphs, 30 on Baseball-Reference).

While Devers is tied for the ninth-best odds to lead MLB in homers, he’s actually never finished in the top 10 in homers for a season and he’s only finished in the top 10 for most homers in the American Leauge once (ninth last season). He did finish fourth in RBIs last season though, so him having the fourth-best odds to lead MLB in RBIs checks out.

Devers holds the seventh-best odds to win AL MVP. He’s never finished in the top 10 in voting before.

Trevor Story

Over/under 29.5 homers (-110/-110). Over/under 81.5 RBIs (-110/-110). Over/under 152.5 hits (-110/-110). MLB home run leader +7000, RBI leader +3500, hits leader +5000, runs leader +4000, stolen bases leader +2200. American League MVP winner +3000 (via DraftKings Sportbook).

After signing a pricey deal to join the Red Sox, Trevor Story will be one of the more intriguing players to watch in all of baseball. The former Colorado Rockies star’s struggles to hit away from Coors Field have been well-documented, which would make it easy to think that he could have a dip in offensive production now that he won’t be playing home games in the Mile High City anymore.

But DraftKings Sportsbook actually has Story’s over/unders in homers, RBIs, and hits noticeably higher than they were last season. For reference, he had 24 homers, 75 RBIs, and 132 hits in 142 games last season.

Story’s cracked the 29.5 homer threshold twice in his six-year career, hitting 35 homers in 2019. Both FanGraphs (27) and Baseball-Reference (24) project Story to finish under 29.5 homers this season, however.

Prior to the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Story had more than 81.5 RBIs in three straight seasons. FanGraphs likes the over there (87) while Baseball-Reference has him far under at 69 RBIs. They also both project him to be under on hits (FanGraphs projects 151 hits for Story while Baseball-Reference projects him to finish with 134).

Story’s longshot odds to lead all of baseball in home runs, hits, and runs all check out looking at his past. He’s finished in the top 10 in MLB in homers (ninth in 2018) and hits once (seventh in 2020). He was also tied for 10th in runs in 2019.

Story’s stolen bases odds are a bit more interesting. He actually led the National League in stolen bases in 2020 with 15 but wasn’t in the top 10 in MLB last season.

Prior to 2021, Story actually finished in the top 12 in NL MVP voting for three consecutive seasons, but never finished higher than eighth. He’s tied for the 13th-best AL MVP odds in 2022.

Xander Bogaerts

Over/under 157.5 hits (-110/-110). MLB home runs leader +8000, RBI leader +3500, hits leader +1800, runs leader +4500. AL MVP winner +4500 (via DraftKings Sportsbook).

DraftKings doesn’t have home run or RBI over/unders listed for Bogaerts, who had 23 and 79, respectively, in 2021. But it does have a line set for how many hits one of the league’s best hitters will have in 2022.

The 2022 hits over/under is actually very close to what Bogaerts had in 2021, when he had 156 hits. Bogaerts has a couple of seasons on each side of the 157.5 over/under for hits in his career. He had 190 hits in 2019, the third 190-plus hit season of his career (the other two were in 2015 and 2016). However, he had 156 hits in 2017 and 148 hits in 2018. FanGraphs projects Bogaerts to have 165 hits in 2022 while Baseball-Reference has him for 143.

Bogaerts has never finished top 10 in the AL, let alone in all of baseball, in home runs. He did finish as high as seventh once though in RBIs, which he did in 2019 with 117.

Bogaerts has the 13th-best odds to lead MLB in hits this season. He wasn’t on the leaderboard in 2021, but he’s had two top-five finishes in his career. He has the 20th-highest odds for AL MVP, which seems a bit low after he finished 12th in voting last season. He’s finished in the top 20 in voting in the last four seasons, including a fifth-place finish in 2019.

Nathan Eovaldi

Over/under 11.5 wins (-105/-115). Over 185.5 strikeouts (-110/-110). MLB strikeout leader +4500, wins leader +2800, AL Cy Young winner +2500 (via DraftKings Sportsbook).

DraftKings is high on Red Sox Opening Day starter Nathan Eovaldi after he had a career year in 2021.

The over/under for Eovaldi’s wins is actually set higher than what he had last season (11). He’s only had 12 or more wins in a season once in his 10-year career, which came in 2015 when he had 15 wins with the Yankees.

FanGraphs likes Eovaldi to slightly get above the over mark, projecting him to have 12 wins in 2022. On the flip side, Baseball-Reference has him just a little under at 10 wins.

Last season was the only time Eovaldi cleared 185.5 strikeouts. He had 195, which is 53 more than the previous high he had for strikeouts in a season (142 in 2014). FanGraphs has him right at the over/under, projecting him to have 185 strikeouts while Baseball-Reference projects him to finish under that total with 167 strikeouts.

Eovaldi has never finished in the top 10 in wins in MLB. He has the 22nd-best odds to have the most wins in MLB in 2022. He’s also never finished in the top 10 in strikeouts. He’s barely on the board to have the most strikeouts in MLB, having the lowest listed odds on DraftKings.

Other props

J.D. Martinez: MLB home run leader +7000, RBI leader +3000, hits leader +2800. AL MVP winner +9000.

Chris Sale: MLB strikeout leader +2000, wins leader +3500, AL Cy Young winner +1600. To record 125th career win: Yes +350, No -550 (via DraftKings Sportsbook).

DraftKings doesn’t have over/unders available listed for the Red Sox’ designated hitter, but it does view J.D. Martinez as a very, very outside threat to be a league leader and to win the MVP. Martinez has been one of the game’s best power hitters for the last several seasons. However, he took a dip in homers in 2021, hitting 28, his lowest in a 162-game season since 2016. The closest he’s ever been to winning the Home Run Crown was in 2017, when he had the third-most homers with 45. FanGraphs projects him to hit 30 in 2022 while Baseball-Reference thinks he’ll have 24.

Martinez has slightly better odds to lead the league in RBIs and hits on DraftKings. However, after he had 99 RBIs last season, FanGraphs projects him to have 98 and Baseball-Reference predicts he’ll have 82 RBIs, which would likely be nowhere near good enough to win the bet. Martinez has only finished in the top 10 in hits once in his career, which was in 2018, so it’s unlikely he’ll lead the league in hits, either.

DraftKings’s odds for Chris Sale are certainly interesting considering that he’ll likely miss at least the first month of the season due to his rib injury. So, it’s unlikely he’ll lead the league in wins or strikeouts but yet he’s tied for the 15th-best odds to lead MLB in strikeouts and has slightly worse odds than Eovaldi to lead MLB in wins. Even more surprising, Sale has the seventh-best odds to win the AL Cy Young. Keep in mind that this will be Sale’s first full season back after recovering from Tommy John surgery, too.

The odds listed for Sale to get his 125th career win aren’t great for the lefty. He’s currently 11 short of that mark and hasn’t had 11-plus wins in a season since 2018. Of course, his 2019 season ended a month early, but he only had six wins that year. He did have five wins in nine starts over the final month and a half of the 2021 regular season, though. If Sale is able to return by early May, he could get the starts needed to reach that mark.