BOSTON — It seemed as though everyone had moved on.

Rafael Devers moving from third base to designated hitter was the story of spring training. The slugger made no attempt to hide his unhappiness and at one point even said he wouldn’t be willing to do it, but eventually the change was made and after a historically bad first week he settled into a rhythm.

Then Triston Casas went down, and now we’re right back at square one.

Ever since Casas’ injury there’s been rampant speculation that Devers could be a solution to fill the void at first base, speculation that manager Alex Cora has tried desperately to tamp down, dismissing the idea out of hand and insisting the club plans to stick with Romy Gonzalez and Abraham Toro for now. But on Thursday Devers blew the lid off the controversy, saying not only that chief baseball officer Craig Breslow had asked about playing first, but that he didn’t want to and was upset the team had asked.

“I don’t think, me personally, it’s the best decision after they asked me to play a different position and I don’t even have two months playing this position to all of a sudden have me play another position,” Devers said via interpreter Daveson Perez. “From my end it doesn’t seem like a good decision.”

“I know I’m a ballplayer, but at the same time they can’t expect me to play every single position out there,” he continued later. “In spring training they talked to me and basically told me to put away my glove, that I wasn’t going to play any other position but DH, so right now I feel it’s not an appropriate decision by them to ask me to play another position.”

Man, where to begin.

This whole thing is a bad look for everyone involved. The Red Sox look shortsighted for not having enough first base depth within the organization, and clearly the communication between club officials and Devers hasn’t been adequate. Meanwhile, Devers comes off looking selfish, like someone who isn’t willing to do what’s best for the team.

Unsurprisingly, the response from fans has been evenly divided, with heaps of criticism coming from all directions.

Clearly the Red Sox misread things here, but with Devers the situation is a little more complicated.

Devers isn’t wrong to be upset about the way he’s been handled over the past few months. It’s also not fair to say he isn’t a team player. Last year he played 138 games despite battling through a series of shoulder injuries throughout the season. He continued to play long past the point where a trip to the IL would have been appropriate, and by the end of the year his production had cratered and he was essentially a shell of his usual self.

He deserves praise for that level of commitment, even if it was arguably to his own detriment.

But Devers has also never shown any interest in taking the next step in his career as a leader, in going above and beyond and doing more than just producing on the field. Since signing his 10-year, $313.5 million contract — the largest in team history — he has consistently deferred to others in the clubhouse when it comes to speaking for the team. That responsibility has instead fallen to other veterans like Justin Turner, Rob Refsnyder and now Alex Bregman.

The position dustups have also exposed Devers’ first instinct to be inwardly focused. He’s viewed these requests as disrespectful, when he could have seen them as opportunities.

That approach stands in stark contrast to one of Devers’ former teammates.

Mookie Betts was a six-time Gold Glove winner in right field, but when the Dodgers needed him to steady their middle infield in 2023, he shifted back to second base and eventually to shortstop, a position with which he had no previous MLB experience. Fast forward two years and he’s played every game this season at shortstop, helping shore up that position and helping keep the Dodgers among MLB’s elite.

That willingness to move around prompted this quote from Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes at the General Managers Meetings this past offseason.

“For Mookie, winning is always No. 1,” Gomes said, per MLB.com’s Sonja Chen. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s like, ‘Hey, this is the best thing. I’ll play wherever.’ I think catching is probably out of the realm of possibility, although I’m sure he would be good at that as well.

“But yeah, I think it’s a lot of conversations with him as well. I know the toll on the body is less in the infield for him. So you can make arguments on both sides of it. But the beauty of Mookie is (he’s) the most selfless superstar we’ve ever been around. And that permeates through the team.”

Could you imagine a similar thing being said by a team executive about Devers right now?

Even if the Dodgers likely communicated better with Betts than the Red Sox have with Devers, if the slugger shared Betts’ mindset there probably wouldn’t have been any controversy to begin with. Plus, it’s also possible the Red Sox might have been reticent to broach the subject because they knew it wouldn’t go over well.

The Red Sox certainly aren’t blameless here, and Devers has frankly been put in a tough spot. Had the roster been better constructed or if there weren’t so many positional logjams, the Red Sox could have avoided all of the Devers drama and maybe also found a way to get Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer to the big leagues by now, too.

But the best leaders rise above the fray, and to this point Devers hasn’t reached a point where his first instinct when confronted by a challenge like this is to lift his team up. And until that day comes, it’s hard to imagine him reaching his full potential as a player and a leader.

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