This year, no American League team has had more chances to come up clutch than the Red Sox. Entering Wednesday, their 588 plate appearances with two outs and runners in scoring position lead the league, and are second only to the Milwaukee Brewers in all of Major League Baseball.

And when Boston needs a big knock, there’s no one they’d rather see coming to the plate than Rafael Devers. The third baseman entered Wednesday evening’s series finale with the Texas Rangers hitting .299 with a .968 OPS, 25 home runs, 31 doubles, and 72 RBI in 105 games. In Wednesday’s game, he extended his AL-leading on-base streak to 19 games; it was already his longest since he began a career-high 23-game stretch on April 24, 2022. He’s also homering at a 5.4% clip, the second-best mark of his eight-year career.

“He’s been amazing. If there’s a chance for us to get Rafael Devers up with two outs and the bases loaded, it’s like, I will take that over any possible situation,” Red Sox hitting coach Pete Fatse told the Herald this week.

That’s what everyone used to say about David Ortiz. When he retired at the end of the 2016 season, it seemed impossible that anyone would even come close to filling the most clutch shoes in franchise history, but Devers is proving a worthy successor. Ortiz even declared Devers “the future of the Red Sox” before his true breakout season in 2019.

“He’s getting to that point,” Fatse said. “His numbers, he’s putting himself in some serious company right now.”

In Tuesday night’s 9-4 win, Devers’ first-inning RBI double broke Carl Yastrzemski’s franchise-record 251 career doubles for a player under 28. The run he drove in tied Ted Williams for second most (627) franchise history by a player age 27 or younger. Devers won’t celebrate his 28th birthday until Oct. 24, giving him over a month to try and break Jim Rice’s record 669 RBI, too.

Since the start of the 2019 season, no Major Leaguer has collected more extra-base hits (392) than Devers, and the gap between him everyone else is in the double digits. His 461 career extra-base hits rank third all-time among Dominican-born MLB players before turning 28; five more, and he’ll overtake Hall of Famer Adrian Beltré. Devers has moved up multiple spots on the Red Sox all-time home-run list this season, passing Xander Bogaerts and Jason Varitek to claim sole possession of No. 11.

Older, more veteran teammates have no problem admitting that Devers, still on the younger end of the roster, astounds them.

“He’s just been so freaking good all year. He’s been so consistent,” outfielder Rob Refsnyder told the Herald. “This is my third year with him, it’s the best I’ve ever seen him.”

Devers has the rare ability to turn the most outside pitches into towering home runs. On June 8, he turned a pitch that was 1.50 feet from the center of the plate into a 423-foot home run at Yankee Stadium. Only once in the Statcast Era (since the start of 2015) has a left-handed hitter homered off a pitcher further outside the zone in either the regular season or playoffs (Kyle Schwarber, 2015 NLCS). Devers’ multi-hit performance on Tuesday night also included one of those kind of knocks, on a pitch several inches below the zone.

“That’s just Raffy being Raffy,” shortstop Trevor Story told the Herald. “He’s in a unique position, because he can chase and hit balls for damage. It’s so impressive how he’s been able to still be athletic and make moves on pitches that aren’t strikes, but also he’s making the pitchers bring it in the zone.”

“He can do so many different things that are just so unique and special, that we can never even dream of doing,” Refsnyder said. “He can take pitches outside the zone and hit them 450 feet. It’s hard to think (what stands out most about his game), because he’s just so much better than all of us.”

“This game is very hard, so you’ve got to constantly make adjustments, and I think each year he just shows his growth as a player, as a person,” said first baseman Dom Smith, who watched Devers from afar before signing with the Red Sox in May. “I think the biggest thing is, if you can control the strike zone, then you’ll be able to get more pitches to do damage with, and he’s doing both. He’s controlling the zone, he’s getting good pitches to hit, he’s not missing them, and even tough pitches, he’s doing damage with those pitches as well. So it’s pretty impressive to watch him just continue to evolve his game and just be one of the most dangerous hitters in the game. He’s a different animal. He can hit everything, which makes him very special.”

He’s also taken enormous strides in the plate discipline department in recent years: this season, he’s in the 88th MLB percentile for walk rate, drawing at a career-high 11.5% clip, a full 2% better than the previous best, which he set last year. He’s walked 53 times in 105 games, putting him 10 away from a career high. He’s also been intentionally walked a career-high 12 times, his third consecutive season of double-digit IBBs.

“He’s unbelievable. It’s crazy, right?” said Fatse, who’s in his fifth year working with Devers. “He’s an aggressive guy and he’s a guy that likes to create opportunity for us and for himself, but I think he’s just done a nice job of letting those opportunities come to him. He’s been Raffy.”

“It’s impressive. In year’s past he had JD (Martinez) and Bogey (Xander Bogaerts) around him, so it could’ve been easy for him to just start swinging wild, and he really hasn’t,” Refsnyder said. “He’s had a good approach, he’s had a great routine, he’s the guy that we all look up to for hitting, he’s one of the best hitters in the game. It’s been a joy just watching him every day.”

In 61 plate appearances with two outs and runners in scoring position, Devers owns a .426 on-base percentage. Only five other players around MLB have a .400 OBP or better with at least 50 such plate appearances.

“I just believe he understands who he is in the lineup,” said manager Alex Cora. “It’s not like he didn’t in the past, but kind of like, (taking) your walks is part of (being) an elite hitter.”

“He’s always had a knack for the moment, since I’ve been with him and, it feels like, his whole career,” Story said. “But I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve noticed over the last two years compared to this year: just patient, man. Committed to his plan and he’s not wavering from that. He’s definitely not passive in those moments, it’s selflessness.”

“I mean, everything, I would say. He’s an all-around well-rounded player,” Smith said when asked to choose his favorite thing about Devers’ game. “He plays hard, he runs the bases hard, plays defense hard, puts together tough ABs. He’ll grind out some at-bats and do an Ichiro-like swing and get base hits, and then he’ll hit a ball 450 feet. I think everything from his game, I think young kids should want to admire and aspire to be like, because he plays the game the right way.”

How would Devers’ fellow position player teammates pitch to him? They wouldn’t dare.

“I would just throw up the four fingers,” Story chuckled as he held up his hand. “Just walk him. I’m not letting him beat me.”

“I’d just walk him. I’ll pitch to everybody else, besides him,” Smith said. “If you have to pitch to him, you try to make your pitches and hope he doesn’t kill you. But you see his numbers, he’s obviously killed pitchers more often than not, so it’s pretty much a lose-lose situation for them when he comes up to the plate.”

And a win-win for the Red Sox.