June 20, 2022
If there ever was a change-of-scenery call up to the majors this might be it. In what seems like a somewhat bizarre time, the Red Sox have called up Jeter Downs, despite him hitting .190 last year and .180 this year in AAA. Downs is a righty hitter and fielder. Jeter Downs was part of the Mookie Betts trade that sent Downs to the Red Sox with Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong. He was coming off a 2019 season where he hit .276/.362/.526 with an .888 OPS with 24 homers from the shortstop position, numbers that got him in MLB.com’s Top 100 Prospects. Downs was also included in a 2018 trade, when the Reds traded him, Josiah Gray, and Homer Bailey to the Dodgers for Yasiel Puig, Matt Kemp, Alex Wood, and Kyle Farmer, as well as cash. Jeter Downs was actually named after Derek Jeter, which is quite comical since Downs is on the Red Sox.
One of the 23-year-old shortstop’s issues is that his BABIP is down nearly 100 points from his season in 2019. No matter how you look at that you can understand why his average has dipped so much. It doesn’t help that his strikeout numbers have also gone up while this is happening. Downs nevertheless has an intriguing power/speed combination that is impossible to overlook. He has 11 homers and 11 steals in just 222 At Bats, as well as a high number of walks. The only thing missing are the base hits for him to be a dynamic player.
He does commit a disturbing number of errors at shortstop so his future will more than likely be at Second Base. He had 17 there in 2019 and 8 so far in 2022. This move will be even more likely with Bogaerts and Story at the MLB level. Downs might not stay with the Red Sox for long, considering Kiké Hernandez and Christian Arroyo should be returning from injury soon.
Downs likely won’t contribute a whole lot this time around (especially since he might not even be starting, considering he’s not in the lineup today), but definitely don’t count him out. An adjustment or two and he could be raking for this Red Sox team in the future. That won’t happen while he’s only hitting homers and nothing else (well unless you are Joey Gallo and hit 40 of them).